ruv  IF  f^ 


* 


BR  125  .K58  1922 

Kingman,  Henry,  1863-1921 

The  place  of  Jesus  in  the 

life  of  today 


\ 


THE  PLACE  OF  JESUS 

IN  THE 

LIFE  OF  TODAY 

A  Series  of  Unconventional  Talks   on 

Some  Present  Day  Realities 

of  the  Christian  Religion 


0^  V>/'. 

By  HENRY  KINGMAN 

Author  of  "Building  on  Rockf  ''Way  of  Honor"  and 
''The  Faith  of  a  Middle-Aged  Man" 


ASSOCIATION  PRESS 

New  York:  347  Madison  Avenue 
1922 


Copyright,  1922,  by 

Thb  International  Committee  of 

Young  Men's  Christian  Associations 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface    v 

Henry  Kingman,  A  Biographical  Sketch   .     .  vii 

A  Gospel  for  Today i 

The  Bringer  of  Love 8 

The  Leader  of  Righteousness 34 

As  Arbiter  of  Debated  Things 51 

The  Bringer  of  the  Kingdom ^y 

Jesus  as  an  Outstretched  Hand 84 


PREFACE 

Old  religions,  stranded  here  and  there  among  the  obliv- 
ious years,  are  a  common  sight.  Names  of  divinities 
that  once  shook  the  world  have  now  to  be  looked  up  in 
books  of  reference.  Clever  writers  tell  us  that  the  reli- 
gion of  Jesus  is  already  laboring  among  the  shallows,  and 
will  soon  be  hard  aground,  never  again  to  move  under  its 
own  power. 

We  believe,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  Christian  faith 
pulsates  with  the  power  and  wonder  and  beauty  of  the 
God  of  Life,  and  that  the  personality  of  Jesus  is — to 
human  experience — the  living  center  of  its  glory.  All 
that  is  sweetest  and  best  in  human  Hfe  still  finds  its  source 
in  Him. 

These  papers  are  written  to  give  expression  to  this  con- 
viction, that  is  as  sunshine  to  the  soul.  They  are  not  so 
much  an  argument  as  a  testimony.  Obviously  they  are 
not  for  the  scholars  or  theologians,  but  for  the  ordinary 
people  who  have  to  live  and  suffer  without  much  comfort 
of  philosophy  or  mystical  experience.  They  are  the  wit- 
ness of  one  who — ^though  plagued  with  doubt  and  some- 
what beaten  on  by  disappointment — has  yet  found  life 
more  and  more  taking  on  the  cast  of  gratitude  to  Jesus 
Christ  for  the  difference  He  has  made. 


HENRY  KINGMAN 

A   BIOGRAPHICAL   SKETCH 

By  George  Irving 

While  Henry  Kingman  does  not  need  any  written 
memorial  a  full  life  of  him  should  be  prepared.  All  too 
few  records  are  made  of  lives  whose  talents  and  oppor- 
tunities, while  above  the  average,  are  yet  not  so  far  in 
advance  of  the  rank  and  file  of  us  as  to  discourage  any 
possibilities  of  emulation. 

There  is  at  least  one  other  good  reason  why  such  a 
life  should  be  written  which  will  appear  more  fully 
I  hope  as  this  sketch  proceeds.  Henry  Kingman  was  a 
hero.  He  was  victorious  in  one  of  the  very  fiercest  fights 
ever  waged  by  a  mortal. 

Henry  Kingman  was  born  in  Boston,  in  1863.  He 
died  in  Claremont,  Gal.,  April  15,  192 1.  He  was  born 
into  a  home  of  substantial  comfort  and  thorough  culture 
• — facts  which  left  their  mark  on  all  his  days,  for  Henry 
Kingman  is  more  frequently  described  by  those  who  knew 
him  best  as  ''God's  Gentleman"  than  by  any  other  term. 

In  1880  he  entered  Colby  College,  Maine,  which  he 
chose  because  of  his  father's  friendship  for  the  president. 
Dr.  Henry  B.  Robins.  Dean  Shailer  Mathews,  a  class- 
mate of  Kingman's  in  Colby  and  a  warm  personal  friend 
to  the  end  of  his  life,  says  of  his  college  days :  "Henry 
Kingman  came  from  a  family  with  traditions.  His  grand- 
father was  Dr.  Rufus  Anderson,  for  many  years  Secre- 
tary of  the  American  Board,  and  his  father  was  a  mer- 

vii 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 

chant  of  standing  in  Boston.  He  brought  to  the  college 
a  natural  sense  of  superiority — a  quality  justified  by  his 
natural  abilities  as  well  as  social  standing.  He  never 
went  into  athletics  in  any  prominent  way,  but  was  among 
the  first  to  organize  tennis,  then  a  new  game  and  quite 
unknown  in  our  little  college  town.  But  he  was  a 
prodigious  walker  and  would  tire  the  best  of  us. 

**His  vitality  was  exuberant.  I  do  not  remember  ever 
knowing  a  young  man  who  seemed  so  radiant  with  health 
and  animal  spirits.  I  recall  that  once  he  persuaded  some 
of  the  little  group  to  which  we  both  belonged  to  sleep 
out  one  rainy  night.  I  was  too  cautious  to  follow  his 
lead,  but  the  campus  for  days  abounded  in  stories  of 
how  the  irrepressible  youth  slept  in  a  tree  after  having 
failed  to  find  protection  in  a  camp  on  a  rainy  night." 

This  reference  to  his  exuberant  vitality  makes  illumin- 
ating reading  for  the  friends  of  the  last  twenty  years  of 
Henry  Kingman's  life,  when  he  carried  with  him  a  body 
beset  by  what  to  many  another  good  man  would  have 
been  overpowering  weakness.  How  little  the  college 
students  whom  he  delighted  to  watch  in  their  games  and 
contests  realized  that,  even  though  now  in  critical  health, 
he  was  a  few  short  years  before  the  equal  of  any  of 
them  in  the  oft-quoted  "pep"  to  which  they  gave  such  a 
high  regard.  Often  have  I  seen  a  quizzical  smile  pass 
over  the  face  of  "the  Bishop,"  as  several  of  his  inti- 
mates affectionately  called  him,  when  some  boisterous 
young  physical  Samson  would  dilate  on  the  absolute 
necessity  of  perfect  health  as  a  basis  of  any  sort  of  suc- 
cess in  Hfe. 

His  college  course  during  which  he  was,  in  the  opinion 
of  a  well  known  classmate,  "on  the  whole  the  most  po- 
tent influence  for  good  in  the  college,"  was  followed  by 

viii 


HENRY  KINGMAN 

three  years  of  study  in  Hartford  Theological  Seminary. 
Here  his  exuberant  spirit  continued.  A  college  mate  says 
he  was  at  the  bottom  of  most  of  the  pranks  at  the  Semin- 
ary. During  his  college  course  he  spent  one  summer 
vacation  as  a  home  missionary  in  Michigan  among  the 
copper  mines.  "His  letters,"  writes  a  friend  of  those 
and  later  days,  "were  a  characteristic  exposition  of  both 
sides  of  his  nature.  He  was  ready  to  work  with  the 
spirit  of  a  martyr  but  he  missed  the  joyous  life  he  lived 
when  among  people  of  culture  and  wealth." 

In  1886  he  went  to  North  China  as  a  missionary  of  the 
American  Board.  His  decision  to  become  a  foreign  mis- 
sionary was  made,  I  believe,  because  it  was  for  him  "the 
way  of  honor."  No  man  could  have  possessed  and  en- 
joyed more  the  rich  associations  and  unmistakable  oppor- 
tunities that  were  his  among  his  own  people.  He  elected 
to  go  to  China  because  he  saw  there  a  difficult  field  that 
unmistakably  called  for  workers.  For  ten  years  he  threw 
himself  into  that  service.  One  who  was  in  a  position  to 
observe  his  work  says  that  "he  soon  came  to  the  front 
as  one  of  the  most  trusted  and  influential  workers." 
Early  in  his  Chinese  career  he  married  Miss  Annie  Lees, 
daughter  of  a  distinguished  missionary  of  the  London 
Mission  Society  and  the  uiron  was  a  perfect  one  in 
every  respect.  Of  the  three  children  from  this  mar- 
riage who  grew  to  maturity,  two  are  today  missionaries 
in  China.  Could  any  commentary  on  the  life  of  parents 
be  stronger  than  this  living  witness  to  their  unselfish  de- 
votion to  the  cause  of  their  Lord? 

On  being  invalided  home  from  China,  Kingman  spent 
some  time  in  Southern  California,  and  while  still  a  very 
sick  man,  was  called  to  the  pastorate  of  the  Congrega- 
tional Church  in  Claremont,  California.  This  church, 
which  is  the  only  one  of  any  character  in  the  home  of 

ix 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 

Pomona  College,  is  unique  in  many  respects.  Usually 
over  a  score  of  different  denominations  are  represented 
in  its  active  membership.  As  a  rule  there  have  been 
during  the  last  fifteen  years  over  twenty-five  retired 
clergymen  and  furloughed  missionaries  in  the  congrega- 
tion. In  addition  the  faculty  of  Pomona  College,  with 
hundreds  of  its  students,  regularly  worshipped  in  this 
church.  This  was  an  audience  to  draw  the  very  best 
out  of  any  man.  To  Henry  Kingman  with  a  mind  tem- 
pered and  sharpened  like  a  Damascus  blade  it  came  as  a 
ringing  challenge.  One  who  was  an  officer  of  the  church 
during  many  years  of  Dr.  Kingman's  pastorate  makes 
this  true  characterization  of  his  preaching :  "To  the  viril- 
ity of  his  thought,  the  logic  of  which  was  inescapable, 
were  added  charm  and  brilliance  of  diction  of  unfaiHng 
attractiveness.  Apart  from  their  moral  and  spiritual 
appeal,  his  sermons  were  models  of  English — not  the 
studied  productions  of  a  mere  master  of  rhetoric,  but 
the  natural  outgoings  of  a  mind  of  rare  genius." 

He  had  himself  passed  through  periods  when  his  faith 
was  tested  as  by  fire.  He  was  so  made  that  he  must  ever 
seek  the  fullest  light  possible  on  any  subject  under  con- 
sideration. His  brilliant,  well-trained  mind  delighted  in 
his  stimulating  audience.  Occasionally  it  would  seem 
as  though  he  had  himself  gone  so  far  beyond  the  experi- 
ence of  most  of  his  hearers  that  they  could  not  fully  fol- 
low him,  but  his  perfect  diction,  his  capacity  to  express 
his  ideas  with  a  clarity  and  a  nicety  which  was  the  de- 
spair of  fellow  preachers,  his  unfailing  good  taste  in  apt 
quotation  and  illustration,  carried  the  interest  of  his 
hearers  on  the  rare  occasions  when  they  could  not  keep 
abreast  of  him  in  his  spiritual  journey.  Almost  always 
he  read  his  sermons,  but  so  splendidly  did  he  master  the 

X 


HENRY  KINGMAN 

art  of  pulpit  reading  it  never  hampered  his  freest  de- 
livery. 

While  Henry  Kingman  scorned  '*to  play  safe"  in  theol- 
ogy or  in  anything  else,  he  was  alike  impatient  of  those 
on  the  one  hand  who  think  they  have  achieved  a  static 
faith  and  on  the  other  those  who  are  ever  "proving  all 
things"  and  never  holding  fast  to  that  which  is  good.  He 
was  profoundly  indignant  with  any  one  who  would  lead 
young  people  into  academic  bogs  and  towards  intellectual 
will-o'-the-wisps. 

The  life  of  a  small  college  town  while  abnormal  is 
vividly  interesting.  In  matters  of  religion  it  is  much  like 
living  in  the  measles  ward  of  a  contagious  hospital.  Al- 
ways the  students  are  the  same  age  and  perennially  are 
they  breaking  out  with  first  one  mental  disturbance  and 
another.  To  many,  naturally  and  properly,  continuous 
questions  come  concerning  their  religious  faith.  Others 
have  heard  that  "College  men  and  women  are  haunted 
by  doubts"  and  forthwith  proceed  to  be  so  "haunted." 
With  each  group  this  Christian  scholar  was  sympathetic, 
patient,  and  eager  to  be  helpful. 

One  who  had  close  intellectual  and  spiritual  fellow- 
ship with  him  writes  discriminate^ :  "To  his  fingertips. 
Dr.  Kingman  was  a  modern  in  his  thinking.  He  kept 
abreast  of  the  world's  best  literature;  and  was  a  keen 
observer  of  the  great  world  movements.  His  judgment- 
values  of  men,  of  books  and  things  were  greatly  prized 
by  his  friends.  In  his  theology  he  was  a  progressive; 
but  he  was  too  wise  and  careful  a  thinker  to  discard  the 
garnered  treasures  of  the  past.  While  an  evangelical 
in  spirit  he  was  often  sorely  baffled  concerning  the  com- 
monly accepted  formulas  of  the  evangelical  faith;  and 
clung  to  the  Cross  while  perplexed  regarding  some  of  its 

xi 


L4  BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 

orthodox  interpretations.  His  faith  was  implicit  rather 
than  expHcit.  His  charming  Httle  book,  'Building  on 
Rock/  is  an  epitome  of  his  religion.  Its  very  title  sug- 
gests that  there  were  certain  things  of  which  he  felt  sure ; 
and  in  which  he  found  a  final  resting  place  for  the  soul." 

More  than  any  but  a  few  of  those  whom  I  have  ever 
met,  Henry  Kingman  deHghted  in  the  refinements  of  life. 
He  was  one  of  the  fortunate  ones  who  could  maintain  a 
proper  balance  in  his  appreciation  of  the  material  and 
spiritual  gifts.  A  classmate  has  pointed  out  that  in  col- 
lege he  was  known,  especially  at  first,  as  aloof.  That 
quality  followed  him  to  the  end  of  life.  This  was  in- 
tensified by  his  physical  limitations.  Longing  for  com- 
radeship and  friendly  relationship  he  was  never  able  to 
be  hail  fellow.  Those  who  were  so  fortunate  as  to  get  be- 
hind his  involuntarily  raised  barrier  of  shy  reserve  found 
a  large,  rich,  full  comradeship  that  is  rarely  if  ever 
equalled  and  never  surpassed  in  human  friendship.  In 
spite  of  and  sometimes  because  of  this  reserve,  hundreds 
of  students,  now  scattered  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  came 
into  helpful  relation  to  this  great  heart  in  a  frail  body. 
President  Blaisdell  of  Pomona  College,  of  which  our 
friend  was  a  trustee  and  unfailing  supporter,  has  writ- 
ten: "I  have  never  known  a  man  whose  mere  presence, 
shut  into  a  sick  room,  dominated  a  community  as  did  the 
spirit  of  Henry  Kingman." 

With  this  demand  for  sincerity,  there  was  coupled 
an  almost  terrifying  power  of  sarcasm.  Sad  indeed  was 
the  plight  of  the  luckless  one  against  whom  it  was  di- 
rected. His  satire  never  burned  without  a  good  reason 
and  then  rarely.  As  one  of  his  warmest  friends.  Rev. 
James  M.  Campbell,  has  written,  ''His  power  of  sarcasm 
and  invective  was  something  'uncanny,'  but  with  the  pass- 

xii 


HENRY  KINGMAN 

ing  years  his  spirit  grew  sweeter  and  mellower,  and  he  had 
but  little  use  for  these  dangerous  weapons.  His  eyes 
could  flash  with  fire,  but  the  prevailing  expression  was 
that  of  gentleness  and  tenderness.  His  smile  was  a 
caress.  He  was  just  the  kind  of  man  to  whom  one  can 
instinctively  turn  for  sympathy  when  in  trouble  and  for 
advice  when  in  perplexity."  Never  have  I  known  any 
man  who  was  more  consistently  impatient  of  all  that 
bordered  on  sham  and  humbug. 

In  1908  the  church,  having  grown  greatly  in  size  and 
demands  on  the  pastor,  decided  to  call  an  assistant.  By 
an  interesting  series  of  Providences  I  was  led  to  that 
post  in  November  of  that  year.  In  all  the  range  of  reli- 
gious work  it  is  doubtful  if  any  other  relationship  gives 
such  an  opportunity  to  test  the  real  quality  of  men.  For 
almost  five  years  we  worked  together  with  perfect  sym- 
pathy and  growing  understanding.  In  this  relationship 
how  often  did  I  see  demonstrated  Kingman's  fine  concep- 
tion of  honor  and  steel-true  loyalty  to  a  friend  and  col- 
league. With  his  own  meager  strength  constantly  drain- 
ing away  he  might  have  been  excused  if  at  times  he  be- 
came impatient  of  those  whose  physical  vigor  was  con- 
stantly increasing.  But  no  such  feeling  ever  existed.  He 
was  ever  the  soul  of  generosity.  Probably  there  is  no  way 
in  which  a  true  man  can  be  detected  more  quickly  than 
by  his  relation  to  those  associated  with  him  in  junior  po- 
sitions. A  truly  big  man  is  ever  eager  to  see  that  those 
about  him  receive  more  than  their  own  share  of  the 
credit  for  anything  that  is  done.  By  this  standard  Henry 
Kingman's  life  was  absolutely  faultless.  He  was,  in  the 
phrase  which  was  often  on  his  lips,  "a  true  Christian 
knight." 

Harry  Emerson  Fosdick,  who  visited  the  college  after 
illness  had  nearly  finished  its  work  with  the  body  of  our 

xiii 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 

friend,  has  this  to  say  about  him :  "Dr.  Kingman  was  one 
of  the  most  gracious,  Christian  gentlemen  whom  I  have 
ever  met,  combining  dehcacy  with  power,  spiritual  in- 
sight with  moral  courage  in  an  unusual  way.  George 
Eliot  says  somewhere  that  some  people  are  like  a  quota- 
tion from  the  Bible  in  the  midst  of  a  newspaper  para- 
graph. I  think  of  Dr.  Kingman  as  deserving  to  have  this 
said  about  him.  Delightfully  human  and  simple  in  his 
friendliness,  there  always  was  a  height  about  his  spirit 
and  a  purity  about  his  insights  that  made  one  feel  that 
he  must  be  living  signally  close  to  the  Eternal  Spirit." 

The  Reverend  James  M.  Campbell,  whom  I  have  al- 
ready quoted,  writes  further  with  restraint  and  insight 
about  some  of  the  qualities  of  his  friend : 

"Perhaps  the  most  outstanding  quality  in  his  character 
was  his  indomitable  courage.  A  braver  soul  I  never 
knew.  He  was  a  true  knight-errant  of  the  Cross.  Of  a 
certain  Greek  poet  it  was  said  that  he  wrote  of  the  sub- 
lime and  was  himself  the  sublime  of  which  he  wrote. 
Our  friend  wrote  of  the  heroic  and  was  himself  the 
heroic  of  which  he  wrote.  His  sermons  were  autobi- 
ographical. They  rang  with  the  note  of  victory.  He 
himself  lived  on  the  victorious  side  of  life,  triumphing 
over  bodily  weakness  and  pain,  concealing  his  own  suf- 
fering, and  entering  into  sympathy  with  the  troubles 
and  sufferings  of  others,  as  if  he  had  none  of  his  own." 

Nothing  could  more  completely  reveal  the  true  life  of 
this  radiant,  heroic,  chivalric  spirit  than  the  following 
comments  on  and  notations  from  his  letters  and  diary 
furnished  by  his  son,  Harry  L.  Kingman,  now  a  mission- 
ary in  China,  who  as  a  college  undergraduate  won  his 
letter  in  every  field  of  athletics  and  became  nationally 
known  as  a  base-ball  player. 

xiv 


HENRY  KINGMAN 

"He  kept  up  his  courage  and  happiness  and  love  in 
spite  of  great  bodily  weakness.  His  diary  shows  that  he 
sometimes  suffered  great  secret  depression  because  of  his 
ever-increasing  asthma  but  he  concealed  it.  In  March 
1920  he  wrote  in  the  diary  which  he  kept  for  over  thirty 
years :  'Dreadful  month  of  asthma.  Cannot  see  way  out.' 
Dec.  3 — 'Very  great  shrinking  from  being  sick  again.* 
Dec.  10 — 'Unprecedented  night  of  sweet  sleep.'  A  week 
before  he  died,  his  sister-in-law  said  to  him,  'Henry,  I 
suppose  you  will  just  go  on  playing  the  game  and  putting 
up  a  brave  fight.'  'What  else  is  there  to  do?'  he  said 
with  his  sweet,  wistful  smile.  He  often  visited  sick  peo- 
ple when  very  miserable  himself.  April  28,  1920,  he 
wrote  in  his  diary — 'Wish  I  could  do  something  of  use.' 
Two  days  before  death  he  wrote  in  scarcely  legible  hand, 
'In  shadow  of  death  from  i  a.  m.  Doctor  thought  I 
could  not  rally.'  It  seemed  as  though  he  was  chuckling 
in  his  weakness  at  again  having  slipped  out  of  death's 
fingers  as  he  had  done  so  many  times  before.  He  was 
always  joking  whimsically  about  his  weakness.  A  year 
ago  he  took  charge  of  the  church  for  a  few  weeks  in  the 
summer.  He  wrote  me,  'And  now  I  am  in  charge  for  a 
few  weeks  and  am  putting  up  a  bluff  at  being  a  live  wire. 
Mother  and  I  are  calling  on  new  families  and  I  am  adver- 
tised to  preach  five  times  in  the  next  four  weeks.  It  will 
be  a  great  joy  if  only  my  strength  is  equal  to  it.  It  hasn't 
been  for  six  weeks  past,  but  the  fine  weather  ought  to 
make  a  difference.  The  trouble  is  almost  more  with  the 
thinking  than  the  actual  preaching,  as  on  so  many  days  I 
am  like  a  mud-turtle  for  lack  of  quiet  sleep,  and  it  is 
hard  to  read  a  thoughtful  book.  Mending  stockings  has 
been  nearer  my  size  intellectually.  I  am  polishing  up  the 
auto,  one  morsel  at  a  time — an  eye  today,  an  ear  tomor- 

XV 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 

row,  the  back  of  the  neck  or  a  hand  the  day  after,  and  so 
on  until  by  the  eye  of  faith  I  can  see  a  clean  car  in  the 
near  future/ 

*'He  was  a  good  sport  and  understood  us  in  a  way  that 
helped  greatly.  He  wrote  me  recently  'It  is  fine  that  you 
can  keep  up  your  athletic  practice.  It  is  a  splendid  cor- 
rective for  too  much  introspection,  and  should  give  you 
the  fresh  personal  contacts  that  are  so  necessary  to  keep 
a  man  wholesome  and  natural.  One  simply  can't  get  too 
much  sunshine  in  his  spirit,  so  long  as  it  doesn't  bleach 
out  his  stern,  strenuous  obedience  to  the  call  of  duty; 
and  I  hope  you'll  never  have  less  enjoyment  of  the  good 
things  of  life  than  you  have  today.' 

*'Many  entries  in  his  diary  show  his  worldwide  sympa- 
thy. He  suffered  when  there  was  famine  in  China  or 
plague  in  India.  He  was  almost  too  sympathetic  and 
patient  in  the  weaknesses  and  shortcomings  of  his  chil- 
dren for  their  own  good. 

*'He  was  the  soul  of  honor.  Whether  it  had  to  do 
with  large  sums  of  money  or  only  the  question  of  using 
some  one  else's  commutation  ticket  there  was  no  wavering 
or  hesitating  as  to  which  way  he  should  go.  The  Way 
of  Honor  was  the  only  way  that  he  knew.  Of  speaking 
in  public  he  wrote  me  'One  must  be  above  all  else  honest 
and  sincere.  Don't  let  enthusiasm  or  zeal  lead  you  to 
exaggerate  or  over-color.  Prune  your  best  passages  se- 
verely, so  that  men  won't  feel  you  are  putting  it  on  thick, 
but  that  you  have  reserves  of  truth  behind.' 

"In  China  he  translated  in  two  years  a  much  needed 
'Harmony  of  the  Gospels,'  but  it  was  destroyed  in  the 
Boxer  uprising  before  anyone  had  seen  it.  He  never 
bewailed  the  loss.  I  hadn't  even  heard  of  it  until  recently. 
Mother  told  me  last  week  that  as  a  young  man  he  was  a 

xvi 


HENRY  KINGMAN 

fine  swimmer.  He  must  have  known  that  it  would  have 
impressed  me  greatly  had  he  told  me,  as  I  aways  rever- 
enced any  sort  of  physical  prowess,  but  never  did  he 
mention  it.  He  was  so  widely  read  that  at  home  he 
might  well  have  spoken  autocratically,  and  have  imposed 
his  beliefs  and  ideas  on  his  children,  but  he  did  not  do 
so.  Just  after  his  book  'Building  on  Rock'  was  published 
he  wrote  me,  'It  was  a  real  comfort  to  read  your  words  of 
appreciation  of  the  little  book,  because  I  was  not  sure 
whether  the  work  was  worth  the  doing.  Over  and  over 
again  I  was  inclined  to  give  it  up  because  it  seemed  so 
dull  and  commonplace — and  yours  was  the  first  judgment 
about  it  that  has  reached  me.  So  I  thanked  God  and 
took  courage.  It  is  not  easy  to  satisfy  myself  now,  and 
whatever  I  do  is  done  at  the  expense  of  an  inordinate 
amount  of  labor.  Fortunately  that  doesn't  matter  much, 
because  I  have  time  enough  and  more.' 

*'He  had  unlimited  faith  in  God  and  also  in  man. 
Dr.  Stoughton,  who  attended  him  in  his  last  illness,  said 
father's  deathbed  was  unique  in  his  experience,  in  its  joy 
and  faith  and  hope.  Of  his  last  summer's  sermons  he 
wrote :  *I  am  afraid  that  I  never  get  out  of  the  rut  of  a 
single  topic  in  these  days,  and  that  all  my  talks  are  merely 
variations  upon  one  theme.  But  people  never  seem  to  get 
tired  of  listening,  and  it  occupies  my  thought  so  largely  to 
the  exclusion  of  other  things  that  I  make  no  effort  at 
originality.  The  miracle  of  God's  love  in  our  poor  fail- 
ing lives  is  a  wonder  of  which  people  never  tire  of  hear- 
ing.' In  another  letter  he  wrote  me,  'There  is  not  the 
slightest  question  in  my  mind  that- — however  one  may  ac- 
count for  it — the  greatest  joy  and  the  greatest  efficiency  in 
life  are  found  in  a  close  alliance  with  Jesus  Christ  All 
sorts  of   things  puzzle  me  and  perhaps  grow  nebulous 

xvii 


A  BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 

with  years,  but  of  this  central  fact  of  experience  I  have 
no  doubt — the  mercy  of  God  comes  to  one  through  faith 
in  Jesus  and  in  His  message.  And  don't  be  at  all  con- 
cerned at  the  inevitable  fluctuations  in  your  own  respon- 
siveness to  this  truth — its  reality  and  fruitfulness  are 
happily  independent  of  our  changing  physical  conditions.' 
"A  short  time  ago  he  wrote  me,  '  You  ask  how  I  would 
express  my  theory  of  Father  and  Son.  I  would  never 
try.  Any  time  this  last  twenty  years  I  should  have  been 
so  sensible  of  being  quite  beyond  my  depth,  that  I  should 
avoid  discussing  the  question  if  possible.  When  one  asks 
if  Jesus  was  of  the  same  eternal  substance  as  the  Father 
^ — if  he  was  God  in  that  sense — I  realize  that  I  don't  know 
what  I  am  talking  about.  I  can  only  affirm  that  Jesus 
and  His  friends  all  agreed  in  affirming  about  Him — that 
He  was  the  God-man — that  "God  was  in  Him,  reconciling 
the  world  to  Himself" — that  He  and  the  Father  were  one 
— that  He  was  the  perfect  expression  and  revelation  of 
God — that  when  we  find  Him  we  find  God — that  He  has 
the  "value  of  God"  for  us.  But  not  one  nor  all  of  these 
affirmations  seems  to  me  to  declare  or  explain  His  met- 
aphysical relation  with  God.  I  shrink  from  calling  Him 
*'God"  even  as  He  never  called  Himself  by  that  name; 
Master  and  Lord  seem  to  satisfy  me;  the  other  term  I 
reserve  for  clearness  sake,  for  the  Eternal  and  Almighty. 
But,  there  as  soon  as  I  begin  discussing  it  I  fall  into 
difficulties.  I  rest  in  the  fact  that  I  find  God  in  Him  and 
through  Him,  and  that  He  came  to  bring  men  to  God. 
I  feel  sure  that  any  doctrine  that  men  have  fought  over 
so  fiercely  for  centuries,  never  able  to  understand  it  or 
explain  themselves  to  others  of  differing  views,  and  one 
where  even  the  necessary  terminology  of  discussion  re- 
quires a  keen  and  highly  trained  mind  to  grasp  the  thought, 

xviii 


HENRY  KINGMAN 

can  never  be  of  the  essentials  of  faith  and  religion.  A 
little  child  can  smile  back  at  Jesus,  with  an  eternal  sub- 
mission of  His  will  to  the  God  who  expresses  Himself  in 
Him.  But  the  Trinity !  I  merely  lose  myself  helplessly 
and  painfully  in  the  effort  to  grasp  its  content.'  " 

In  spite  of  increasing  physical  weakness  Henry  King- 
man lived  vividly  and  gladly  to  the  very  end.  On  the 
morning  he  died,  just  before  the  end  came,  he  returned 
to  consciousness  to  find  Mrs.  Kingman  weeping  by  his 
bedside.  On  asking  her  why  she  was  weeping  she  re- 
plied that  she  could  not  let  him  go.  *'Is  that  what  it  is  ?" 
he  asked.  In  reply  to  the  unarticulated  affirmative, 
with  the  smile  that  was  so  characteristic  of  his  whole  life, 
he  replied,  "Then  it  is  inexpressibly  beautiful."  With 
these  brave  words,  so  characteristic  of  him,  upon  his  lips 
this  triumphant  warrior  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  laid 
down  his  sword  at  his  Master's  feet.  Like  that  other 
radiant  spirit  who  had  much  the  same  physical  burden  to 
carry  he  could  have  said,  "Gladly  I  have  lived  and  gladly 
I'll  die,  and  I  lay  me  down  with  a  will."  In  one  of  his 
last  published  sermons,  delivered  only  a  few  months  be- 
fore his  death,  in  speaking  on  the  text  "One  thing  I  do, 
I  press  forward,"  he  quotes  a  couplet  which  is  truly  auto- 
biographic : 

"The  handles  of  my  plow  are  wet 
The  shares  with  rust  are  spoiled 
And  yet,  and  yet  my  God,  my  God 
Keep  me  from  turning  back." 

God  answered  his  prayer. 

xix 


Chapter  I 
A  GOSPEL  FOR  TODAY 

A  thoughtful  man  today — whether  in  Wall  Street  or  on 
the  Arabian  desert — cannot  long  be  forgetful  of  the  prob- 
lems of  God  and  life.  Interest  in  them  are  a  part  of  his 
manhood.  And  if  he  is  honest  as  well  as  thoughtful,  he 
does  not  want  to  get  away  from  them,  because  his  highest 
welfare  seems  somehow  to  be  bound  up  with  their  solu- 
tion. From  time  to  time,  in  moments  of  unwonted  spir- 
itual attention  and  discernment,  the  consciousness  of  God 
wells  up  in  him  as  from  some  unplumbed  depth  of  real- 
ity in  his  own  being,  and  troubles  him  with  questions  he 
cannot  answer.  What  does  it  all  mean?  What  is  the 
relation  of  this  tantalizing,  incomplete  human  life  to  the 
illimitable  life  of  God?  How  near  can  He  come  to  us 
across  the  unbridged  unseen?  Can  our  weakness  draw 
in  any  way  upon  His  strength,  or  our  troubles  find  com- 
fort in  His  help? 

Questions  such  as  these,  that  may  have  been  curiously 
indifferent  to  us  once,  press  in  upon  us  with  hungry  in- 
sistence as  years  go  by  and  we  are  made  to  feel  how 
slight  our  hold  upon  earth's  sunshine  is.  And  never  does 
such  a  question  thrust  itself  on  our  attention  but  we  are 
brought,  whether  we  will  or  no,  face  to  face  with  the  per- 
sonality of  Jesus  Christ.  What  He  once  said  and  did 
and  was  has  taken  such  hold  on  the  thought  and  con- 
science of  mankind,  that  we  cannot  think  of  God,  or  of 

I 


2  PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

the  way  in  which  His  life  may  touch  our  lives,  without 
thinking  in  terms  of  Jesus'  experience  and  teaching.  The 
clarity  of  His  insight  in  these  matters  so  far  outruns  any- 
thing else  of  which  we  have  any  knowledge  in  the  world 
of  religious  literature,  that  it  cannot  honestly  be  ignored, 
if  we  are  to  think  of  them  at  all. 

And  so  it  happens  that  the  association  of  Jesus  with 
the  life  of  today  is  as  inevitable  as  the  human  hunger  for 
some  knowledge  of  the  unfathomable  abysses  of  life  and 
death  that  hem  us  in.  Sooner  or  later,  out  of  our  depth 
or  need,  we  cry  out  for  light,  for  understanding — and 
there  stands  this  Jesus,  of  ancient  Nazareth,  professing 
to  offer  just  the  knowledge  that  we  want.  What  are  we 
to  make  of  Him  ?  What  are  we,  who  are  caught  so  help- 
lessly in  the  intellectual  currents  of  the  twentieth  century, 
to  do  with  this  Teacher  of  the  first  century  in  Asia? 
Half  of  our  present-day  literature,  we  may  say,  seems  to 
ignore  Him  as  constituting  any  factor  in  the  thinking  of 
our  time.  And  yet  He  makes  profound  appeal  to  all  in 
us  that  is  most  divine.  What  place  has  He  among  the 
forces  that  are  actually  moulding  society  today? 

It  is  easy  to  give  to  questions'  such  as  these  conventional 
answers  out  of  the  past,  such  as  once  seemed  to  settle 
the  matter  with  authority  and  to  silence  discussion. 

But  in  point  of  fact  the  familiar  answer  of  authority 
simply  does  not  engage  the  interest  of  the  young  people 
of  this  generation.  It  does  not  meet  them  intellectually 
where  they  are — it  fails  of  their  respect  as  well  as  of  their 
sympathy,  as  though  it  were  an  evasion  of  honest  inquiry. 
This  is  true  whether  we  think  of  the  young  men  and 
women  in  our  colleges,  or  of  such  a  vast  and  representa- 
tive gathering  of  the  average  men  of  today  as  was  assem- 


A  GOSPEL  FOR  TODAY  3 

bled  in  camps  and  trenches  during  the  war.  No  official 
pronouncement  out  of  the  distant  past,  whether  from  an 
infallible  church  or  an  infallible  book,  can  any  longer  be 
relied  upon  to  make  friendly  connection  with  the  modern 
point  of  view,  or  satisfy  the  critical  search  for  truth  that 
has  become  the  intellectual  habit  of  our  generation,  and 
that — critical  and  unsparing  though  it  be — is  nowhere 
more  fittingly  employed  than  in  seeking  for  the  greatest 
truth  of  all. 

When  we  set  ourselves  to  think  who  Jesus  was,  and 
what  He  is  to  the  present-day  society,  we  may — because 
of  early  training  and  unshakable  convictions — be  quite 
content  with  an  interpretation  of  His  person  and  message, 
couched  in  forms  and  habits  of  thought  belonging  to  an 
age  so  remote  and  unfamiliar  as  to  have  passed  altogether 
out  of  the  understanding  of  the  common  people  of  our 
Western  world.  To  us  it  may  be  all  living  and  significant, 
inexpressibly  dear  and  sacred,  also,  through  its  associa- 
tions. But  the  fact  that  some  of  us  have  been  trained 
from  childhood  to  understand  and  appreciate  this  He- 
brew imagery  should  not  make  us  forgetful  of  the  needs 
of  the  ordinary  man  of  today  who  has  had  no  such  train- 
ing— one  of  the  eighty  per  cent  of  the  men  of  Great  Brit- 
ain not  in  touch  with  the  church — and  who  is  often  ir- 
ritated by  his  utter  inability  to  relate  church  teachings  to 
the  matter-of-fact  world  of  reahty  in  which  he  lives. 
As  Canon  Barnett,  apostle  to  the  East  End,  said  to  his 
Anglican  friends,  out  of  his  deep  sympathy  for  the  poor 
of  Whitechapel,  "We  who  feel  the  charm  of  the  old 
words  and  phrases  need  to  compel  ourselves  to  remember 
that  this  feeling  is  not  shared  by  the  majority."  He  urged 
on  his  associates  the  need  of  simple  intelligible  expression 


4         PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

of  the  great  truths,  because  even  the  best  of  men  in  our 
day  are  for  the  most  part  "too  hurried  to  look  for  a  mean- 
ing which  is  not  on  the  surface." 

Jesus  spoke  His  undying  message  in  terms  so  simple 
and  universal  in  their  interest  as  to  appeal  equally  to  the 
untaught  Syrian  peasant  of  the  old  world,  and  to  the 
university  student  of  our  day.  The  stories  of  the  prod- 
igal son,  the  lost  sheep,  the  lilies,  and  the  sparrows,  the 
man  with  the  talent  in  a  napkin — the  pictures  of  pride 
and  humility  and  service  also — are  as  vivid  and  eloquent 
now  as  when  He  uttered  them.  They  deal  with  prim- 
itive and  elemental  phases  of  human  experience,  in  its 
many-sided  relation  with  the  will  of  God.  The  great 
thing  He  tried  to  accomplish  with  men  astray  from  God 
was  so  pathetically  simple  as  compared  with  the  demands 
of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  or  the  Nicene  Creed,  that 
even  the  social  derelicts  of  His  day  could  grasp  His 
intent  and  fulfil  it.  And  the  great  vital  realities  that 
the  man  in  the  street  today  needs  to  know  and  feel,  are  so 
unembarrassed  and  tinconfused  with  metaphysical  prob- 
lems or  theological  subtleties,  that  they  must  admit  of 
very  plain  and  unconventional  statements,  suited  for  prac- 
tical and  busy  men.  As  one  of  the  leading  philosophers  of 
today  has  said,  "Subtle  religion  is  false  religion."  The 
truth  about  religion  cannot  be  in  itself  obscure  or  intri- 
cate— it  corresponds  too  closely  with  our  most  elemental 
instincts  for  its  expression  to  be  limited  to  a  single  type 
of  traditional  presentation,  however  sacred. 

And  so  it  must  be  possible,  if  we  choose,  to  discuss 
the  whole  question  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  and  His 
place  in  modern  thought  and  life  with  a  range  and  free- 
dom quite  unembarrassed  by  traditional  limitations.  It 
is  by  no  means  necessary  to  confine  ourselves  to  an  in- 


A  GOSPEL  FOR  TODAY  5 

terpretation  of  the  viewr-point  of  the  first  generation 
of  Christian  disciples,  as  in  a  study  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. Such  an  interpretation  is  o'f  course  indispensable. 
But  the  field  of  experience  has  enormously  widened  since 
that  day.  Unhesitating  acceptance  of  Jesus'  leader- 
ship was  a  pure  experiment  then — it  needed  a  bold  and 
trustful  heart  indeed  to  step  out  on  that  untried  way. 
The  mental  reaction  upon  it  of  men  hke  Peter  and  John 
and  Paul  was  that  of  men  facing  a  problem  bewilderingly 
new  and  strange.  Since  their  day,  however,  it  has  been 
tested  and  tried  and  weighed  and  examined  in  the  labora- 
tory of  life  in  every  conceivable  way.  Millions  of  earnest 
men  and  women  have  lent  the  undivided  energy  of  their 
souls  to  its  understanding.  In  every  imaginable  mortal 
stress,  men  have  trusted  the  so-called  gospel  of  Jesus,  and 
we  have  the  age-long  record  of  their  venture  of  faith. 
Surely  a  humble,  thoughtful  man  in  this  twentieth  cen- 
tury must  have  before  him  a  range  of  facts  in  illumination 
of  the  mission  of  Jesus  that  Paul  never  knew,  together 
with  whole  worlds  of  spiritual  experience  that  lay  below 
any  horizon  he  could  see,  beyond  the  horizon  of  his  age. 
Of  course  it  is  worse  than  futile — it  is  disastrous — to 
try  to  meet  the  need  of  our  own  day  for  a  gospel  that 
meets  men  where  they  are,  that  appeals  to  them  so  as  to 
compel  attention,  by  dropping  out  of  sight  the  eternal 
realities  of  redeeming  love  and  forgiving  compassion,  and 
preaching  instead,  not  the  Jewish  law,  but  a  new  and  better 
law  suited  for  the  twentieth  century — a  law  of  service. 
Of  course  it  is  intelligible  and  interesting — it  is  divine  and 
beautiful  and  most  truly  Christian,  and  the  conscience 
yields  assent.  But  it  no  more  meets  men's  immemorial 
hunger  for  God  and  for  the  daily  refreshment  of  His 
undimmed  love  and  mercy,   than  the  call  to  pay  our 


6  PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

debts  assures  us  of  a  comfortable  income.  Men  are  as 
ready  as  they  ever  were  to  listen  intently  to  the  realities 
of  the  grace  and  truth  that  came  by  Jesus  Christ.  But 
the  truth  today  best  wins  a  hearing-  if  it  is  in  a  form 
easy  to  be  grasped — if  it  seems  to  be  a  part  of  the  every- 
day world  in  which  -we  live,  and  not  of  a  religious  shad- 
ow-land of  venerable  antiquity. 

The  following  studies  are  a  fragmentary  contribu- 
tion to  the  effort  at  the  re-appraisal  of  Jesus  with  which 
the  men  and  women  of  our  generation  are  engaged.  They 
are  an  interpretation  of  human  experience — a  discussion 
of  the  significance  of  Jesus  for  our  world — not  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  Church  or  even  of  the  New  Testament, 
but  of  an  ordinary  man  of  today,  reacting  on  all  that 
life  has  to  offer  towards  a  conclusion,  from  the  open-air 
talks  of  Jesus  in  the  calm  of  Galilee  to  the  deadly  struggle 
of  the  World  War  in  Europe.  It  is,  to  be  sure,  absurdly 
fragmentary  and  inadequate  as  an  interpretation,  in  view 
of  the  infinite  wonder  and  mystery  of  the  subject.  But 
so  far  as  it  goes,  it  deals  with  realities  that  the  human 
heart  thrills  to  believe  and  of  which  it  is  a  joy  to  speak 
with  confidence. 

Note. — There  are  two  assumptions  that  underlie  the  whole  of 
the  following  discussions:  (i)  That  we  have  today  in  the 
New  Testament  an  indisputable  record  of  the  great  outlines 
of  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus.  After  all  allowance  has 
been  made  for  sane  sceptical  criticism,  the  picture  that  remains 
is  unchanged  in  its  essential  features  of  incomparable  and  com- 
pelling power.  Neither  peasant  nor  pedant  of  his  day  had  the 
religious  genius  to  alter  substantially  the  outlines  of  that  supreme 
personality.  There  are  disputable  points,  of  course,  where  sure 
conclusions  may  not  be  within  our  reach.  But  in  the  fields  we 
are  about  to  traverse,  we  walk  with  a  sure  step,  without  apology 
or  hesitation.  (2)  That  the  only  contact  of  Jesus  with  our  time 
is  by  way.  of  men's  faith  in  Him.  His  influence  is  manifestly 
a  spiritual  influence,  and  the  only  way  it  can  possibly  be  brought 


A  GOSPEL  FOR  TODAY  7 

to  bear  is  through  the  lives  of  those  who  are  willing  to  receive 
it.  His  place  in  any  society,  as  in  any  individual  life,  is  sharply 
limited  by  the  response  accorded  Him — whether  of  sympathy 
or  indifference  or  critical  doubt.  It  would  seem  to  go  without 
saying  that  His  power  over  anyone  for  go«od  must  be  propor- 
tioned to  one's  confidence  in  Him,  not  to  the  correctness  of 
one's  theological  beliefs,  but  to  the  genuineness  of  his  faith  in 
Jesus  as  a  revealer  of  God.  Only  as  men  or  nations  believe  in 
Him,  does  he  bring  to  them  the  benefits  of  which  we  speak. 


Chapter  II 
THE  BRINGER  OF  LOVE 

Let  us  go  straight  to  the  heart  of  our  subject  at  the 
beginning,  and  speak  of  Jesus  as  the  great  bringer  of  love 
into  the  Hfe  of  today.  We  cannot  get  closer  to  the  real- 
ity of  life,  to  the  actual  operative  forces  of  the  universe 
we  know,  than  when  we  come  to  the  power  of  love. 
There  are  all  sorts  of  natural  forces  about  us  by  means 
of  which  we  can  work  wonders  for  human  comfort,  and 
we  are  apt  to  be  a  bit  overawed  by  the  overwhelming 
evidences  of  their  value  and  power  in  the  development  of 
modern  civilization.  But  not  one  nor  all  of  them  together 
can  preserve  the  civilization  whose  material  welfare  they 
have  built  up,  or  keep  it  from  falling  back  into  moral 
chaos.  They  have  not  the  sublime  energy  in  highest 
spheres  of  development  to  enable  them  to  deal  with  human 
hearts,  as  electricity,  e.  g.,  deals  with  so  many  refractory 
materials.  Half  the  homes  in  Europe  are  bitter  with 
misery  or  want  today,  or  bitterer  still  with  hatre-d  and 
fear  and  spiritual  bankruptcy;  and  all  the  resources  of 
science  are  unequal  to  bringing  them  back  to  brother- 
hood and  joy. 

But  love  can  do  it.  Wherever  you  see  a  trace  of  it  in 
action  in  the  desolated  area,  you  see  a  ray  of  hope  break- 
ing through  the  pall  of  misery.  But  it  is  the  only 
natural  power  of  such  divine  efficiency  with  human  souls 

8 


THE  B RINGER  OF  LOVE  g 

as  to  give  any  promise  in  face  of  so  bewildering  a 
task. 

When  we  talk  about  love,  then,  we  are  not  dealing  with 
mere  pious  emotion  or  airy  sentiment,  but  with  a  reality 
as  irresistible  in  its  power  as  the  half-invisible  flame  of 
the  oxy-acetylene  torch — only  in  immeasurably  wider 
and  more  delicate  relations.  If  the  place  of  Jesus  in  the 
life  of  today  is  inseparably  associated  with  a  productive 
energy  like  this,  then  it  is  a  place  of  power  indeed.  And 
as  a  matter  of  fact  and  commonest  observation  it  is  so  as- 
sociated, as  cause  with  effect — where  the  influence  of  Jesus 
comes,  there  love  springs  up.  Many  common  folk,  per- 
plexed with  various  doubts,  rest  on  that  unshakable  fact 
with  great  comfort  of  spirit. 

There  is  no  sort  of  doubt  as  to  what  Jesus  did  for 
the  people  of  his  own  brief  time — He  brought  love  home 
to  their  lives.  The  most  notable  thing  He  did  for  them 
was  not  primarily  to  bring  them  comforting  words  about 
divine  benevolence,  or  new  ideas  as  to  the  need  of  love 
in  social  relations,  but  the  very  substance  of  love  itself. 
This  was  an  altogether  astonishing  thing  for  a  great 
sage  or  rabbi  to  do.  It  was  too  homely  and  human  to  be 
profound,  or  startling,  or  original,  as  the  founder  of  a 
religion  is  supposed  to  be.  Anyone,  not  a  genius,  can 
be  kind  and  compassionate.  And  yet  the  chief  distinc- 
tion of  Jesus  was  that  He  warmed  with  love  hearts  that 
were  dead  and  cold  as  burned-out  cinders,  and  brought 
them  back  to  Hfe  and  God.  Many  of  the  hated  profiteers 
and  plunderers  of  His  day,  both  men  and  women,  were 
curiously  affected  by  this  divine  friendliness  that  could 
not  be  hidden  nor  mistaken.  It  was  almost  ridiculous 
that  they  should  be  attracted  to  a  perfectly  unselfish  man, 
a  preacher  of  righteousness.     It  was  an  utterly  incon- 


10        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

gruous  association.  But  they  were  attracted  to  Jesus  be- 
cause they  saw  He  loved  them,  and  yet  was  good.  The 
scribes  and  Pharisees  went  up  and  down  the  streets,  fairly 
exhaling  the  odor  of  sanctity:  but  just  in  proportion  to 
their  righteousness  they  were  cold  as  ice  to  the  sinners  of 
the  town.  Love  and  religion  made  queer  company  to 
their  thinking.  But  Jesus  brought  a  new  thing  to  the 
light  of  day — a  kind  of  religion  that  actually  expressed 
itself  in  sympathy  with  objectionable  people.  He  broke 
down  their  defences  against  goodness  before  they  knew 
where  they  were :  and  He  carried  this  so  far  that  He  be- 
came known  as  the  friend  of  undesirable  citizens. 

In  one  way  it  is  easy  to  understand.  It  was  simply  that 
He  was  so  human — not  like  the  religious  leaders  of  his 
day  and  most  days.  He  understood  people  better  than 
they  understood  themselves.  And  seeing  how  much  of 
the  divine  was  in  them,  marking  them  out  as  God's,  He 
linked  Himself  to  it  as  with  hooks  of  steel  and  tried  to 
draw  them  back  to  their  Father..  It  was  a  strange  fas- 
cinating phenomenon  in  the  religious  world,  to  which  men 
gave  different  explanations. 

Jesus  Himself  gave  it  an  explanation.  And  here  the 
inexhaustible  mystery  and  wonder  that  have  always  clung 
about  His  person  assert  themselves  at  once.  He  claimed 
that  He  brought  love  into  life  for  the  astounding  rea- 
son that  He  came  from  the  Almighty  God.  He  set  the 
door  of  heaven  ajar,  and  the  light  that  came  through  was 
that  of  fervent  compassion  for  human  sorrow. 

The  religious  leaders  of  His  day  protested  fiercely,  as  at 
blasphemy  against  the  national  Jehovah.  The  holier  men 
were,  the  wider  of  necessity  was  the  gulf  between  them 
and  the  rabble  of  the  unlearned  and  unclean:  and  as  for 
the  ignorant  worshippers  of  idols,  they  were  fitting  fuel 


THE  BRINGER  OF  LOVE  ii 

for  God's  wrath.  But  the  face  of  Jesus  was  as  wistfully 
kind  to  the  unclean  as  to  the  clean,  and  to  the  ignorant  as 
to  the  learned.  Whatever  else  was  perplexing  about 
His  mission,  this  at  least  was  clear,  that  He  turned  the 
light  of  God  on  the  drab  life  of  the  common  people,  and 
lo  and  behold!  it  was  a  light  tremulous  with  the  deep 
colors  of  pity  and  love  and  sacrifice. 

We  talk  of  it  with  glib  familiarity,  as  though  the  West- 
ern world  had  always  believed  it.  Yet  when,  in  rare 
moments  of  spiritual  illumination,  we  catch  a  fleeting 
glimpse  of  its  reality,  that  He  who  is  behind  all  things 
regards  us  as  Jesus  regarded  those  poor  straying  men  and 
women  in  His  day,  what  glory  and  wonder  our  human  life 
takes  on!  One  would  hardly  be  afraid  of  life  or  death 
if  Jesus  were  right. 

It  was  a  most  winsome  propaganda  while  it  lasted — 
strangely  merciful  and  unworldly  to  venture  out  into 
open  competition  with  the  cold  wisdom  of  this  world. 
But  it  lasted — as  one  might  say — only  through  one  long 
summer  day,  and  then  night  overtook  the  loving  face 
and  the  friendly  voice,  and  they  disappeared  forever  from 
among  men.  So  far  as  men  could  see,  only  the  memory 
of  that  face  and  voice  remained,  in  the  minds  of  a  few 
peasant  friends — no  book,  no  school,  no  written  word, 
only  the  memory  of  a  divine  love  searching  out  human 
need,  transitory  as  a  wind  in  the  forest  that  rustles  the 
leaves  and  then  is  forgotten.  Whatever  power  of  self- 
propagation  that  love  might  have,  it  was  left  to  a  few 
loyal  hearts  in  the  midst  of  the  sinister  selfishness  of 
their  age.  One  would  have  thought  it  would  run  out 
quickly — say  in  three  generations  at  the  most:  like  a 
mountain  stream  lost  in  desert  sands.  A  faith,  a  con- 
viction, a  life,  so  largely  interwoven  with  emotion,  would 


12        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

quickly  run  into  strange  forms  and  pass  on  into  other 
manifestations,  and  so  be  superseded.  Even  if  left  to 
itself,  it  might  be  trusted  soon  to  disappear,  just  because 
of  its  delicacy  and  unworldly  beauty  in  an  impossible  set- 
ting— like  a  rare  exotic,  doomed  to  degenerate  among 
common  weeds. 

But  the  little  circle  of  friends  of  the  friendly  man  was 
not  even  left  to  itself.  As  it  grew,  it  ran  into  perils  in- 
credible, unimaginable — unending  in  number  and  variety. 
It  lived  amid  hostile  forces,  like  a  lamb  in  a  forest  haunted 
by  a  wolf -pack.  The  blood-rusted  ungiilce  themselves — 
sharp  claws  of  iron,  used  by  the  Roman  magistrates  to 
tear  the  flesh  of  accused  Christians — were  not  so  cruel 
as  the  dangers  that  sprung  up  from  among  themselves. 
The  lingering  influence  of  Jesus  was  not  only  smothered 
in  blood,  it  was  crushed  with  bigotry,  it  was  volatilized 
in  argument. 

And  yet,  as  so  shrewd  a  publicist  and  man  of  the  world 
as  the  genial  Col.  Watterson  of  Kentucky  said  only  the 
other  day,  ''The  teaching  and  example  of  the  Prince 
of  Peace  have  been  engulfed  beneath  oceans  of  ignorance 
and  superstition  through  two  thousand  years  of  embittered 
controversy" ;  but  "never  in  the  history  of  the  world  was 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  so  interesting  and  predominant"  as 
now. 

In  spite  of  all  our  pessimisms  this  fact  is  clear  as  the 
sun.  Jesus  means  more  to  the  men  of  today  than  He 
ever  did  to  the  men  of  Judea.  Bitter  as  the  bigotry  and 
strife  have  been,  all  the  more  starvingly  eager  is  the 
wistful  hungriness  of  men  for  what  He  still  brings  to  life. 
His  own  inner  circle  of  friends  was  bigoted  and  quarrel- 
some, even  when  He  was  with  them ;  and  again  and 
again  He  had  to   call  them  back  to   humble,   unselfish 


THE  B RINGER  OF  LOVE  13 

brotherliness.  And  today  His  call  is  just  as  thrillingly 
clear  and  inevitable  that  any  who  follow  Him  should  be 
"tenderhearted,  humble-minded,  forgiving  one  another." 
The  incomparably  urgent  need  of  society  today  is  for 
just  what  Jesus  brings — self-mastery  for  the  ends  of  love. 
The  nations  of  the  twentieth  century  need  for  their  de- 
velopment food  and  clothing  and  labor,  and  the  raw  mate- 
rials of  coal  and  iron  and  oil  and  cotton:  but  they  may 
have  all  these  in  abundance  and  yet  stagger  backward  till 
civilization  is  drowned  in  night.  But  the  spirit  of  Jesus, 
love  and  good-will  and  self-restraint,  will  carry  on  the 
human  race  to  ever  higher  stages  of  development.  The 
process  of  development  in  creation  may  be  hindered  and 
brought  to  a  stand  in  our  own  century  by  the  self-asser- 
tion of  human  instincts  that  ally  us  with  the  animals : 
but  in  Jesus  we  find  the  very  force  needed  to  carry  on 
creation  to  its  consummation. 

One  stands  in  amazement  before  this  fact.  We  have 
become  so  used  to  hear  Jesus  spoken  of  in  terms  of  patron- 
age or  indifference  or  unbelief,  that  we  need  to  shake 
ourselves  free  of  popular  affectations  to  realize  that  He 
actually  supplies  to  society  just  the  constructive  force 
that  humanity  needs  for  life  and  growth.  The  future  of 
humanity  is  not  with  the  last  clever  novelist  who  con- 
descends to  the  Master.  The  key  to  advancement  is  with 
Jesus.  Because  moral  power  radiates  from  Him.  He 
is  the  living  center  of  operative  love.  That  is  not  pious 
exaggeration,  but  prosaic  fact  legibly  written  in  un- 
counted lives.  The  reality  of  power  is  here.  For  the 
purposes  of  unselfish  service,  Jesus  is  to  men  of  today  what 
the  sun  is  to  the  plant  world.  Where  He  is,  life  is. 
The  thrill  of  His  example  spreads  far  beyond  the  circle 
of  those  who  name  His  name — even  to  Buddhists  and 


14        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

agnostics.  And  as  men's  hearts  turn  to  Him  in  honest 
devotion,  fresh  energies  are  being  released  every  day 
for  social  redemption.  It  is  every  whit  as  true  for  fisher- 
men on  the  Labrador  coast  as  it  once  was  for  fishermen 
under  the  hot  skies  of  Galilee — the  fellowship  of  Jesus 
lifts  them  up  into  touch  with  God  and  His  Fatherly  ways. 
He  lets  the  light  of  heaven  shine  on  their  understanding, 
and  straightway  they  see  new  visions  and  think  unac- 
customed thoughts  of  gentleness  and  friendliness  with 
men. 

We  look  to  see  how  this  result  of  power  is  actually 
achieved  in  men's  lives  today  through  the  medium  of 
Jesus'  personality.  Roughly  speaking  there  are  two  sets 
of  conditions  that  spoil  and  cripple  life  and  render  it  ig- 
noble and  ineffective.  Both  of  them  fight  against  love — 
they  inhibit  its  operation,  and  benumb  and  paralyze  the 
more  generous  impulses  of  our  nature.  The  old  Baby- 
lonians had  to  fight  with  them  just  as  do  our  neighbors 
in  the  next  street,  and  no  conceivable  future  developments 
of  society  can  alter  very  much  their  hostile  influence. 
It  is  the  glory  of  Jesus  that  He  brings  in  love  in  spite 
of  them — even  by  means  of  them. 

First  of  all  is  the  eternal  enemy  of  love  in  every  form — 
sin.  One  shrinks  from  using  a  word  so  inextricably 
bound  up  with  ages  of  odious  controversies,  and  one  so 
thoroughly  out  of  taste  today.  But  what  other  term 
describes  the  element  we  all  admit  in  human  nature  that 
is  like  the  moth  and  rust  of  the  soul,  ever  at  work  to 
destroy  our  spiritual  possessions?  The  common,  deadly 
selfishness  that  drinks  up  love  ? 

Our  thinking  ought  to  be  clearer  on  this  matter  than 
it  was  ten  years  ago.  We  have  had  a  riot  of  sin  for 
years — not  of   the  polite  artistically  draped  indulgences 


THE  BRINGER  OF  LOVE  15 

that  modern  society  permits  itself,  but  of  the  raw  pas- 
sions of  tlie  brute,  scientifically  edged  and  sharpened  for 
destruction.  We  have  drunk  to  the  loathsome  dregs  the 
cup  of  that  will-to-power  that  unblushingly  disassociates 
itself  from  love  and  all  its  works.  And  tens  of  millions 
of  innocent  women  and  children  are  still  suffering,  day 
and  night,  because  the  dregs  of  the  cup  are  so  dreadful 
in  their  poison  of  death.  Men  have  thrown  away  love 
with  both  hands,  in  utter  abandonment,  and  they  have  been 
reaping  the  destruction  that  Jesus  used  to  speak  about 
in  words  as  awful  as  the  condition  of  those  uncounted 
homes  of  sorrow.  Here  is  stark  reality — such  as  chills 
the  blood  to  look  at  near  at  hand — the  reality  of  sin. 

And  Jesus  opposes  to  it  the  other  reality,  equally  sure 
but  infinitely  wider  in  its  scope  and  reach,  the  love  of  His 
Father.  Here  also  was  a  cup  for  men  to  drink,  He 
said,  with  no  dregs  of  death  or  any  disappointment  what- 
soever, but  a  cup  of  joy — an  elixir  of  life.  Not  in  any 
high-flown,  mystical  way,  for  emotional  ecstatic  natures, 
but  in  a  perfectly  obvious  way  of  daily,  homely  operation 
in  the  common  life  of  common  people.  Their  Father 
loved  them,  forgave  them,  received  them  back  to  friendly, 
intimate  association,  so  as  to  undercut  the  root  of  their 
distrust  of  him,  and  bring  the  evil  flower  of  their  ill-will 
to  the  ground,  a  wilted  plant,  unable  to  flourish  in  the 
wholesome  sunlight  of  His  goodness. 

It  is  impossible  for  any  one  to  believe  heartily  in  Jesus 
without  finding  himself  being  led  out  into  this  open  sun- 
shine of  God's  love,  as  a  very  first  step  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  new  Leader.  We  may  have  been  a  tor- 
ment to  ourselves  and  to  others,  because  of  our  wrong 
thinking  and  wrong  doing.  An  uneasy  conscience  is  a 
ceaseless  irritation,  making  a  man  "gey  ill  to  Hve  with." 


i6        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

But  an  uneasy  conscience  cannot  live  in  one  who  trusts 
himself  to  the  truth  of  Jesus'  teaching.  The  poor  beg- 
gared spendthrift  who  crept  back  to  his  father's  house — 
in  Jesus'  story — was  miserable  enough  with  cankering 
remorse  and  uncertainty  and  shame :  but  all  these  feelings 
suddenly  fell  away  into  speechless  gratitude,  when  he  felt 
his  father's  arms  about  his  neck  and  knew  that  his  father 
loved  him  still.  A  touch  of  nature  makes  the  whole 
world  kin,  and  in  this  respect  the  South  Sea  savage  re- 
acts just  as  the  educated  Chinese  scholar — Jesus  actually 
brings  them  into  touch  with  the  Almighty  Father  of  their 
spirits,  and  at  this  touch  of  sympathy  the  whole  world 
alters.  Forgiveness  and  the  forsaking  of  what  displeases 
Him  mean,  suddenly,  the  dawn  of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth. 

We  see  the  all  but  incredible  wonder  of  it  in  the  lives 
of  those  who  have  forgotten  what  love  is,  who  are  yet 
brought  by  a  miracle  of  kindness  within  the  range  of 
Jesus'  influence.  Years  ago  a  young  Scotchman  and  his 
wife  were  set  ashore  on  the  beach  of  the  island  of  Tanna, 
in  the  New  Hebrides,  in  the  hope  that  they  might  be 
able  to  bring  the  gospel  of  Jesus  to  the  natives.  They 
were  not  able.  The  islanders  were  blood-thirsty  savages, 
filthy,  brutal,  dangerous,  and  delighting  in  cruelty  of 
every  kind.  Times  past  remembering  they  plotted  mur- 
der against  the  man  who  tried  to  love  them  into  a  true 
manhood.  For  months  he  lived  in  the  very  shadow  of 
death,  familiar  daily  with  threat  of  club  and  killing 
stone,  musket,  and  spear,  in  the  hands  of  furious  enemies. 
Within  four  years  they  drove  him  out  empty  handed, 
leaving  even  his  wife  and  little  child  buried  there  by  the 
beach,  waiting  like  hostages  for  his  return. 

More  than  thirty  years  later,   his  son,  Frank  Paton, 


THE  BRINGER  OF  LOVE  if 

landed  again  on  the  shore  of  Tanna.  The  same  crowd 
of  naked,  painted  savages,  with  spears  and  guns,  pressed 
down  to  meet  him.  Yet  now  he  had  certain  aids  in  his 
work  among  them,  and  very  early  the  work  began  to  show 
results.  The  very  chief  who  had  once  led  a  war  party 
to  murder  his  father  was  among  the  first  converts.  An- 
other and  another  followed.  Schools  were  begun  and 
presently  a  church  was  formed.  And  when,  at  the  end 
of  only  five  years,  Mr.  Paton,  broken  in  health,  was  forced 
to  leave,  under  what  conditions  do  you  suppose  he  parted 
from  them,  who  had  been  so  lately — both  outwardly  and 
inwardly — like  very  children  of  the  devil?  "The  hardest 
thing  to  bear,"  he  says,  "was  the  sorrow  of  the  people." 
On  the  day  just  before  his  departure  the  church  was 
crowded  in  the  early  morning  with  hundreds  of  those 
who  had  come  to  a  farewell  service.  One  stalwart  man, 
who  had  become  himself  a  teacher,  spoke  on  the  words, 
"Surely  he  hath  borne  our  griefs  and  carried  our  sorrows." 
With  tears  rolling  down  his  face,  he  told  them  how 
true  these  words  were  of  their  own  pastor,  who  had  suf- 
fered with  them  and  for  them,  and  now  was  going  away 
in  sickness.  Then  the  war  chief,  lavis,  rose,  and  after 
speaking  on  the  verse,  "What  shall  it  profit  a  man  if  he 
gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul,"  begged  the 
people  to  show  their  love  for  their  missionary  by  being 
better  Christians.  Then  with  prayer  and  singing  the 
meeting  concluded. 

In  the  moving  words  of  Mr.  Paton,  "It  was  a  dreadful 
parting  from  our  people.  Death  would  have  been  easier 
than  that  terrible  wrench.  As  the  steamer  moved  out, 
we  watched  the  light  in  our  home  till  it  faded  into  the 
darkness,  and  then  we  went  below  to  battle  through  the 
sorest  night  in  all  our  life.     We  may  travel  far  afield, 


i8        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

.  .  .  but  we  shall  never  meet  with  nobler  or  more  Christ- 
like men  than  Lomai  and  his  brave  fellow-teachers. 
They  are  heroes,  every  one  of  them,  God's  Heroes." 

A  great  power  house  at  Niagara  is  a  wonderful  sight, 
but  is  there  anywhere  a  whirring  dynamo  whose  energy 
is  in  any  way  comparable  with  the  power  behind  those 
words,  "Surely  He  hath  borne  our  griefs  and  carried  our 
sorrows"?  The  reality  of  love,  and  especially  of  love 
that  suffers  in  silence,  plays  upon  the  hearts  of  men  of 
all  tribes  and  peoples,  as  the  high  current  plays  upon  the 
lighting  system  of  a  great  city.  And  it  is  undeniably 
in  Jesus  that  we  find  the  undying  center  of  those  high 
currents  of  spiritual  power  that  lift  men  out  of  degrada- 
tion and  make  them  heroes  who  had  been  vicious  cowards. 

Hardly  less  impressive  is  the  experience  of  one  at  the 
opposite  end  of  the  scale  from  those  imbruted  cannibals, 
one  whose  whole  life  was  a  seeking  after  God,  yet  barren 
and  forlorn  for  lack  of  love  to  feed  upon.  The  story 
of  the  well-known  Chundra  Lela,  of  India,  throws  a 
clear  ray  of  light  on  the  singular  power  of  Jesus'  influence 
to  make  love  triumph  over  the  restlessness  of  an  uneasy 
conscience.  Born  in  India,  far  up  among  the  mountains 
of  Nepal,  of  a  priestly  Brahman  family,  she  was  left 
a  child- widow  at  the  age  of  nine.  Nevertheless  her 
father  gave  her  a  careful  education,  and  took  her  with  him 
when  she  was  but  twelve  years  old,  on  her  first  pilgrimage 
to  Juggernath,  where  he  died  of  cholera.  More  and  more 
eagerly  she  studied  the  sacred  books  of  the  Hindus, 
until  she  decided  that  a  vision  of  God  and  forgiveness  of 
sins  would  be  worth  more  to  her  than  anything  else  in 
the  world.  With  this  one  end  in  view  she  left  home  with 
two  other  widows  of  like  mind,  on  a  long  series  of  pil- 
grimages  to  the  sacred  places  of   India,   seeking  some 


THE  B RINGER  OF  LOVE  19 

evidence  that  the  Supreme  Being  was  pleased  with  her 
worship.  Thousands  of  miles  they  travelled  on  foot, 
through  perils  innumerable,  of  robbers  and  wild  beasts 
and  pestilence  and  famine,  taking  seven  years  to  com- 
plete the  circuit  of  the  holy  places.  But  no  comfort 
came  to  her,  nor  any  rest  of  soul,  though  she  was  now 
a  devotee  and  holy  woman,  reverenced  by  all  for  her  piety. 
Again  she  set  out  upon  her  fruitless  quest,  hungry  of 
soul  for  what  no  temple  or  priest  could  give.  This  time 
she  went  far  up  into  Assam,  and  there  on  the  Brahma- 
putra River,  surrounded  on  three  sides  by  hills  and 
forests,  she  lived  alone  for  eight  years,  far  from  any 
human  habitation,  striving  to  gain  by  austerities  and 
self-torture  the  approval  of  God  she  craved.  Only  twice 
in  these  years  did  she  see  the  face  of  a  human  being,  and 
the  story  of  the  self-inflicted  torments  she  underwent  is 
all  but  incredible  to  a  Western  mind. 

The  forests,  Hke  the  temples,  brought  her  no  rest.  She 
returned  to  India,  and  there  for  the  first  time  learned  of 
the  Christian  Bible.  She  secured  a  copy  and  for  months 
studied  it  together  with  the  Hindu  Shasters.  The  story 
of  Jesus  filled  her  with  inexpressible  hope  and  longing, 
and  in  the  end  her  prayers  were  answered  and  her  heart 
overflowed  with  joy  as  she  put  her  trust  in  him.  She 
was  a  Christian!  From  that  time,  for  more  than  thirty 
years,  until  her  body  was  feeble  and  her  hair  white  with 
age,  she  went  up  and  down  through  northern  India, 
known  everywhere  as  a  "holy  woman,"  telling  of  the  love 
of  God  that  had  come  to  her  through  Jesus  Christ.  She 
had  found  that  which  made  her  forlorn  life  blossom  like 
the  rose,  and  she  gave  that  late  blooming  life  utterly  to 
Him  who  had  brought  deliverance. 

The  finest  flower  of  our  own  type  of  intellectual  develop- 


20        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

ment  is  not  too  proud  to  make  the  same  confession  of 
loyalty  to  Him  who  has  made  love  triumph  in  their  lives, 
in  spite  of  their  own  fears  and  failures.  Witness  that 
last  word  of  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall,  in  which  he  left  di- 
rections for  his  funeral  service: 

"I  have  indicated  what  shall  be  said  and  sung  today 
because  my  one  great  longing  is  for  the  joy  of  wit- 
nessing in  death,  as  I  have  tried  to  witness  in  life, 
to  my  adoration  and  faith  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
my  Lord  and  my  God  in  whom  I  rest  securely  for 
salvation,  pardon,  and  peace.  I  lie  among  my 
friends.     They  love  me.     I  love  them." 

We  read  behind  those  simple  lines  the  moving  story 
of  a  glowing  life-purpose,  incandescent  with  the  trans- 
mitted energy  of  love.  And  it  is  the  same  story  that 
underlies  that  last  "author's  prayer"  of  Professor  Raus- 
chenbusch,  "Pardon  the  fraility  of  thy  servant,  and  look 
upon  him  only  as  he  sinks  his  life  in  Jesus,  his  Master 
and  Saviour." 

Both  of  these  men  were  intensely  modern;  they  were 
alive  in  every  fibre  with  social  sympathies.  But  they 
bore  glad  witness  that  this  love  was  the  overflow  of  a 
life  made  possible  only  by  what  Jesus  Christ  had  brought 
them.  Their  very  memory  is  like  sunshine:  is  there 
any  doubt  from  whence  that  sunshine  came? 

Professor  Rauschenbusch  would  have  believed  in  Jesus 
in  a  far  different  way  from  that  poor  transfigured  cannibal 
of  the  New  Hebrides,  just  as  Dr.  Martineau  and  Mr. 
Moody  and  Col.  Roosevelt  would  each  have  had  a 
sharply  differing  view-point  for  regarding  Him.  Yet 
all  would  have  agreed  that  Jesus  made  life  rich  and 
beautiful,  because  He  set  the  way  to  God  wide  open  in 
spite  of  sin.     Jonathan  Edwards  made  the  average  worldly 


THE  B RINGER  OF  LOVE  21 

man  feel  that  God  was  the  awful  Soverei^  and  Judge, 
whose  wrath  was  the  very  element  in  which  he  lived. 
Jesus  made  the  careless  men  and  women  of  His  time  to 
feel  that  God — in  every  way — was  better  to  them  than 
the  fathers  whom  they  knew.  If  fathers  were  tender  and 
forgiving  toward  their  often  wilful  cliildren,  *1iow  much 
more"  did  their  Father  in  heaven  long  for  their  good, 
and  welcome  their  stumbling  efforts  to  return  to  Him. 
And  Jesus  has  this  place  in  the  life  of  today,  that,  where- 
ever  men  believe  in  His  word,  He  makes  them  know  that 
between  them  and  God  there  may  be  a  flawless  sympathy. 
Not  a  half-suspicious,  half-grudging  toleration  on  His 
part,  secured  on  the  credit  of  another ;  but  limpid  natural 
affection,  as  between  father  and  son.  And  every  atom  of 
its  strength  and  purpose  leads  men,  as  they  perceive  it,  to 
forsake  and  hate  the  sin  that  as  a  matter  of  experience 
shuts  them  out  from  Him.  So  love  takes  possession 
of  them. 

Even  with  the  clear  assurance  of  Jesus*  word,  many  of 
the  best  men  and  women  of  our  day  never  come  to  trust 
God's  love  as  they  would  trust  their  own  father's.  For 
them,  God  is  not  as  human  as  Jesus,  not  as  good  as 
the  parents  of  their  childhood  home.  The  old  terfbr 
of  the  Oriental  monarch  still  clings  about  Him.  There 
is  a  story  of  a  little  girl  who  was  learning  to  write. 
With  laborious  effort  she  had  prepared  a  whole  sheet  of 
her  handwriting,  to  show  her  father  as  a  surprise.  One 
night  when  he  came  home,  his  little  daughter  brought 
him  her  masterpiece,  and  with  pride  and  joy  submitted 
it  for  his  approval.  Several  small  blots  were  on  the 
page,  which  were — even  in  her  eyes — a  disagreeable  in- 
trusion. But  over  these  she  laid  her  hand,  saying,  "Don't 
see  the  blots,  father!"     What  father  would  be  deaf  to 


22        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

such  an  appeal?  The  spirit  and  purpose  of  her  loving 
effort  were  what  counted,  and  not  the  staring  imperfec- 
tions  of   her  pathetic   attempt  to   please   him. 

But,  as  many  of  us  well  know,  we  do  not  give  God 
credit  for  being  as  good  as  that.  We  do  not  believe  in 
Jesus'  teaching  at  this  point.  What  is  called  the  "New 
England  conscience"  is  a  sorry  reflection  upon  God's 
patience  and  sympathy  with  His  children.  If  we  come 
to  God  at  night  with  the  story  of  the  day,  often  it  is  only 
of  the  blots  we  are  thinking,  and  only  the  blots  that  we 
suppose  will  attract  His  attention.  And  the  result  is 
to  keep  always  a  cloud  between  ourselves  and  God,  to 
keep  us  always  uncertain  and  uneasy  as  to  His  favor,  and 
so  to  rob  life  of  the  free  gladness  of  His  love.  To  be- 
lieve in  Jesus  is  to  have  a  better  wisdom  than  this,  for 
still  He  assures  men  that  all  we  know  of  human  love  and 
forbearance  is  but  a  poor  reflection  of  what  is  in  our 
Father's  heart. 

It  is  not  wholly  amiss  to  recall  the  street-boy's  defini- 
tion of  a  friend,  as  "a  feller  who  knows  all  about  yer,  but 
likes  yer  just  the  same."  Some  of  us  haven't  even  the 
homely  good  sense  to  trust  that  God  comes  up  to  the 
level  of  a  friend !  We  are  still  partly  under  the  influence 
of  ancestors  who  thought  they  pleased  God  by  living  in 
an  atmosphere  of  sorrowful  self-reproach  and  extrava- 
gant self-depreciation.  As  Jonathan  Edwards  said  in  his 
diary,  among  many  similar  expressions,  ''When  I  look 
into  my  heart,  and  take  a  view  of  my  wickedness,  it 
looks  like  an  abyss  infinitely  deeper  than  hell."  What 
sort  of  family  life  would  be  possible  where  the  children 
so  abased  themselves  in  perpetual  remorse  for  their 
shortcomings,  they  seem  never  to  have  considered.  In 
any  case,  Jesus  brings  to  men  of  this  as  of  every  day  the 


THE  B RINGER  OF  LOVE  23 

natural,  wholesome  life  of  love,  in  spite  of  sin  and  blunder- 
ing and  failure.  It  is  only  the  plainest  outcome  of  ex- 
perience to  affirm  that  there  is  no  other  name  under 
heaven  given  among  men  that  can  give  such  assurance  of 
eternal  goodness,  reaching  out  of  the  infinite  unseen,  to 
assist  and  beautify  our  familiar  daily  plodding  through 
these  earthly  years. 

But  there  is  something  gravely  wrong  with  life  besides 
the  wrongness  of  men's  hearts — something  bewilderingly 
wrong  and  hostile.  The  terms  of  this  earthly  struggle  for 
existence  are  not  what  one  would  expect  in  God's  world 
' — they  are  too  harsh!  Huxley  and  Spencer  were  after 
all  hardly  more  drastic  in  their  summing  up  of  the  merci- 
lessness  of  Nature  than  was  Paul,  when  he  said  "the 
whole  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  in  pain  together 
until  now."  Life  is  kind  to  a  chosen  few:  but  on  many 
sensitive  hearts  its  forces  beat  like  flails,  bruising  and  be- 
numbing with  sheer  pain:  not  kindly  pain,  directed 
to  helpful  uses,  but  senseless,  useless  suffering,  em- 
bittering the  spirit  like  punishment  undeserved.  Men 
strike  out  against  it  blindly,  and  because  they  see  no  one 
else  to  blame,  they  blame  God.  Love  dies  at  the  root, 
and  faith  with  it:  and  God's  face  is  hidden  from  them. 

One  remembers  what  Mrs.  Annie  Besant  said  to* 
Moncure  Conway,  as  they  came  out  of  the  court-room 
where  the  judge  had  just  taken  from  her  the  care  of  her 
little  daughter — "It  is  a  pity  there  isn't  a  God :  it  would 
do  one  so  much  good  to  hate  him."  During  these  last 
few  years  we  have  heard  from  bewildered  hearts,  tor- 
tured by  the  spectacle  of  suffering,  many  such  utterances 
as  this,  voicing  the  bitterness  of  their  distress  of  doubt. 
Dr.  Fort  Newton,  of  the  City  Temple  in  London,  quotes 
a  letter  he  received  from  one  of  the  boys  of  the  church 


24        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

in  the  trenches,  dated  "Somewhere  in  Hell."  One  of  the 
sentences  ran  as  follows :  ''Dear  Preacher,  forgive  me 
writing  so.  I  know  you  will  forgive,  but  who  will  forgive 
God?  Not  I — not  I.  This  war  makes  one  hate  Grod. 
.  .  .  He  let  it  happen.  Omnipotent !  and — He  let  it  hap- 
pen. Omniscient !  He  knew  it  in  advance — and  he's  let 
it  happen.  I  hate  Him.  .  .  .  You  have  been  kinder  to 
me  than  God  has  been." 

God. knows,  men  and  women  who  speak  like  this  are 
distraught  with  pain.  But  there  are  many  of  them  thus 
distraught,  and  life  for  them  is  a  feverish  rebellion  against 
things  as  they  are.  The  comfort  of  a  reassuring  love 
passes  them  by,  leaving  them  defiant  and  hard  and  often 
dangerous  to  society. 

There  are  many  more  who  never  reach  defiance,  whose 
spirits  are  yet  broken  by  misfortune.  The  pleasant 
light  of  life  dies  out  and  leaves  them  in  the  shadow. 
They  are  defeated  by  life's  hardness  and  carry  their  bur- 
den heavily  through  dragging  years,  making  the  world 
a  sadder  place  for  others,  because  of  their  self-pity  and 
discouragement.  It  may  be  sickness,  or  failure,  or  lone- 
liness, or  fear:  but  whatever  it  is — and  no  one  can  deny 
the  strain  and  sorrow  of  it — it  robs  them  of  life's  joy 
and  shuts  them  out  from  the  comfort  of  their  Father's 
presence.  It  is  wholly  pitiful  to  think  of  the  number  of 
those  who,  for  one  reason  or  another,  lead  dispirited, 
drooping  lives,  without  the  resilience  and  buoyancy  of 
love  triumphant  over  all. 

The  place  of  Jesus  is  of  one  who  brings  back  victory 
of  the  spirit  to  those  who,  but  for  Him,  had  been  sullen 
and  defeated  or  perhaps  only  heart-broken.  It  is  not 
so  easy  to  say  just  how  He  does  it,  but  that  He  does  it^ — 
for  those  who  believe  in  Him — we  have  the  grateful  wit- 


THE  B RINGER  OF  LOVE  25 

ness  of  men  and  women  past  numbering,  in  every  walk 
of  life  and  in  every  generation.  He  floods  one's  con- 
sciousness with  the  assurance  on  which  He  Himself 
rested  in  the  dark,  that  a  Father's  ten'derness  is  behind 
and  above  all  distress,  and  that  He  will  not  let  his  child- 
dren  slip  from  His  remembrance  and  good  care. 

They  suffer — yes.  Nothing  interferes  to  save !  But 
the  suffering  is  not  the  last  word.  The  last  word  is 
victory  and  joy  and  love  triumphant.  That  is  the  con- 
fidence which  Jesus  had  in  His  own  heart  when  He  was  de- 
spised and  forsaken  of  men,  and  He  somehow  puts  it, 
indestructible,  in  the  hearts  of  those  who  trust  in  Him. 
"When  I  sit  in  darkness,  the  Lord  shall  be  a  light  unto 
me." 

He  does  not  do  it  by  argument,  or  by  reiterated  prom- 
ises. In  His  daily  meeting  with  anxious  men  and  women 
He  must  have  said  numberless  reassuring  things,  sooth- 
ing the  sting  of  their  sorrow  and  reviving  their  courage. 
But  hardly  a  trace  of  them  has  been  preserved.  It  is 
nothing  less  than  astonishing  that  the  three  first  gospels 
have  so  few  utterances  explaining  life's  hardness  and 
affirming  the  compassion  of  God.  Jesus  does  not  even 
once  use  the  word  "love"  of  His  Father,  as  does  the  Old 
Testament  so  often  with  deep  feeling — so  completely  do 
the  simple  records  shun  any  tendency  to  sentiment  or 
emotion.  But  every  day  of  His  life  unfolded  the  divine 
compassion  in  ways  that  the  world  W'ill  not  forget,  and 
every  fresh  glimpse  of  His  calm  self-possession  reveals 
His  confidence  that  love  and  not  evil  will  win  the  day. 

This  is  what  makes  men  today  stand  courageously  firm 
in  circumstances  where  their  hearts  ache  with  trouble 
they  can  neither  explain  nor  relieve.  They  might  crum- 
ple up  under  it  morally,  losing  faith  in  God  and  courage 


26        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

for  life  and  the  spiritual  victory  that  makes  one  great. 
It  is  easy  to  show  yellow= — to  give  up,  or  break  down,  or 
turn  bitter.  But  when  one  sees  Jesus  standing  over 
against  him — like  one  stricken,  smitten  of  God,  and  af- 
flicted— yet  undefeated,  unafraid,  majestic  in  His  trusting 
obedience  to  His  Father's  will,  then  one  needs  no  argu- 
ment. This  is  not  a  "rotten  world,"  this  same  world  in 
which  Jesus  once  went  quietly  to  His  death,  triumphing 
by  faith  and  love.  If  He  rested  on  His  Father's  goodness, 
in  spite  of  pain  and  shame  surging  over  Him  in  the  dark, 
then  who  are  we  to  lose  heart  and  faith  when  the  hard 
days  come  and  heavy  clouds  lie  like  lead  upon  our 
spirits !  If  He  could  rest  on  God's  love  to  the  very  end, 
then  we  who  believe  in  Him  can  do  nothing  else  in  our 
sharp  trials.  In  any  case,  explain  it  as  you  will,  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  in  human  hearts  today  makes  men  look 
up  in  love  and  hope  where,  but  for  Him,  their  eyes  would 
be  bent  miserably  upon  the  ground. 

Life  all  about  us  is  full  of  instances  of  this  reality. 
The  heroic  triumphs  of  spirit,  maintained  by  love  that 
cannot  understand  yet  stakes  all  on  Jesus'  word,  are  all 
around  us,  in  humble  lives  of  which  the  wise  world  never 
hears.  Years  ago  the  writer  well  knew  a  young  mother, 
glorified  by  pride  and  joy  in  a  little  daughter,  her  baby. 
Suddenly  it  was  stricken  down  by  infantile  paralysis, 
and  the  mother,  who  longed  to  shield  it  from  every 
breath  of  pain,  had  to  look  on,  day  after  day  and  week 
after  week,  while  the  smiling  face  grew  drawn  and  hag- 
gard with  sufifering.  Even  for  friends  who  came  in  for 
an  hour,  it  was  a  sight  too  sad  to  see.  But  for  her,  the 
mother,  whose  arms  could  no  longer  rest  the  little  griev- 
ing daughter,  it  was  such  a  way  of  sorrow  as  often 
makes  of  life  a  hopeless  enigma  of  blinding  disappoint- 


THE  B RINGER  OF  LOVE  27 

ment.  But  because  her  spirit  rested  on  the  assurance  of 
Jesus,  when  the  end  came  she  wrote  her  pastor : — 

"We  look  to  you  to  voice  our  gratitude  for  so  much 
of  beauty  and'dehght  and  sweetness,  which  has  been  and 
still  is  ours.  We  both  feel  very  strongly  that  we  cannot 
thank  the  dear  Father  enough.  .  .  .  We  know  that  some 
day  the  revelation  will  be  given  of  what  these  suffering 
months  have  wrought  for  her.  How  good  He  has  been 
to  keep  our  faith  through  the  time  of  mystery  and  dark- 
ness !  In  all  the  trial  there  has  not  been  a  drop  of  bitter- 
ness." 

If  He  can  make  love  so  triumphant,  without  strain,  even 
in  life's  darkest  hours,  then  there  is  a  great  place  for 
Him  today  in  the  lives  of  men  and  women — perhaps  even 
in  our  own. 

Take  from  India  another  instance,  of  the  place  of 
Jesus  in  life's  dark  realities.  There  was  a  bright,  happy 
young  girl  of  seventeen  in  an  Indian  orphanage — popular 
with  all,  engaged  to  be  married,  delighting  in  a  glad 
world.  Without  warning,  there  broke  out  sores  upon 
her  hands  that  shut  her  up  to  a  living  death  as  a  leper. 
She  was  admitted  to  the  Leper  Asylum  opened  by  that 
well-known  friend  o.f  the  forlorn,  Sam  Higginbottom  of 
Allahabad.     He  tells  of  her  arrival  there. 

"Arrived  at  the  asylum,  we  all  went  in.  It  was  not  into 
the  beautiful  quarters  we  have  now,  but  into  a  miserable, 
tumble-down  collection  of  dilapidated  mud  huts,  not 
fit  for  the  habitation  of  any  living  thing.  This  fair  young 
girl,  dressed  in  her  white  clothes,  looked  round  this 
fearful  place,,  and  caught  sight  of  a  group  of  creatures 
crouched  under  the  trees.  She  took  one  look  and  then 
threw  her  head  on  her  brother's  shoulder  and  sobbed  as 
though  her  heart  would  break.     She  asked :     Ts  that  what 


28        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

I  am  coming  to?    Am  I  going  to  be  as  one  of  those?* " 

A  few  days  later,  trying  to  comfort  her,  he  reminded 
her  of  how  much  had  come  into  her  Hfe  from  others 
to  make  it  richer  and  fuller  and  better,  and  urged  her 
to  have  a  school  for  those  forlorn  women,  and  to  teach 
them  some  of  the  hymns  she  knew.  She  agreed  to  try. 
Months  afterwards  she  opened  her  heart  to  one  of  the 
missionary  doctors : 

"She  said  when  she  first  went  into  the  Leper  Asylum 
she  did  not  believe  there  was  any  God;  or,  if  there  were  a 
God,  He  could  not  be  a  God  of  love  and  afflict  any  human 
being  as  He  had  afflicted  her.  *But  now,'  she  continued, 
'every  day  I  live  I  thank  God  he  made  me  a  leper,  be- 
cause as  a  leper  He  has  given  me  a  work  to  do  for  Him 
that  otherwise  I  would  have  known  nothing  about.' 

"As  one  went  through  the  women's  quarters  and  saw 
the  women,  clean  and  neat  and  tidy,  with  hope  in  their 
faces  and  songs  in  their  hearts,  nearly  every  one  of  them 
having  learned  to  know  Jesus  and  having  confessed  Him, 
it  was  evident  that  the  consecrated  life  of  this  Indian  leper 
girl  had  borne  abundant  fruit  for  the  glory  of  God  and 
the  help  of  His  afflicted  children. 

"Today,  eleven  years  after  she  first  entered  the  asylum, 
she  is  the  same  sweet  Christian.  She  shows  traces  of  the 
awful  suffering  caused  by  the  disease,  but  behind  the 
furrows  of  pain  one  sees  the  radiant  calm  of  one  who  has 
foimd  Jesus  able  to  save." 

Amid  a  thousand  perplexities,  we  are  sure  that  there  is 
no  nobler  capacity  in  life  than  this,  to  be  able  to  wring 
victory  out  of  defeat,  and  to  make  love  blossom  out  of 
conditions  that  breed  bitterness  and  rebellious  protest. 
And  we  find  this  capacity  in  lives  all  about  us,  rooted  in  a 
faith  in  Jesus.    His  conviction  as  to  the  divine  love  behind 


THE  B RINGER  OF  LOVE  29 

the  menacing*  evil,  becomes  their  conviction.  Arthur 
Lyttleton,  British  Secretary  of  State  for  the  Colonies  a  few 
years  since,  had  certain  severe  trials,  ending  with  death 
of  his  little  boy.  But  out  of  it  all,  and  in  spite  of  its  bruis- 
ing impact  on  his  soul,  he  drew  the  ''unalterable  conviction 
that  there  is  strength  and  beauty  and  glory  to  be  won 
from  these  awful  events."  Our  world  desperately  needs 
the  forces  of  such  an  unconquerable  faith  in  love  beyond 
all,  and  we  find  them  in  fact  inseparably  associated  with 
the  influence  of  Jesus. 

It  would  be  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  His  touch 
on  the  life  of  today  is  felt  only  as  men  are  directly  con- 
scious of  His  personal  agency,  or  as  the  love  that  re- 
fines their  lives  reaches  them  through  the  channel  of 
ecstatic  or  mystical  feeling.  It  would  no  doubt  be  a  won- 
derful and  convincing  experience  to  have  a  new  world 
dawn  on  one  as  it  did  on  Paul,  or  Chundra  Lela,  or  thou- 
sands of  other  twice-born  souls,  as  through  the  direct, 
personal  agency  of  the  great  Revealer.  Many  people  still 
would  like  to  think  that  all  divine  agencies  must  be  super- 
natural agencies,  working  by  means  that  are  miraculous 
or  at  least  marvellous.  But  as  we  now  well  understand, 
God's  divinest  ways  with  men  are  often  very  homely  and 
familiar  ways,  so  natural  and  unobtrusive  as  scarcely  to 
excite  remark.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact,  Jesus  is  a 
bringer  of  heavenly  love  into  the  lives  of  this  generation 
by  means  so  simply  natural,  that  thousands  of  our  young 
people,  inexpressibly  indebted  to  Him,  are  hardly  con- 
scious of  any  debt  at  all.  The  incalculable  value  of  His 
contribution  to  their  lives  escapes  their  notice,  because  they 
fail  to  notice  how  far  their  moral  heritage  is  of  His 
creating. 

The  love  of  God  may  seem  to  us  to  be  at  best  some- 


30        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

thing  very  unsubstantial  and  far  away — and  so  indeed  it 
is,  if  it  is  to  dawn  on  us  only  through  visions  or  spiritual 
transports.  But  suppose  it  looked  out  on  us  first  through 
our  own  mother's  eyes,  bending  over  us  in  infancy,  and 
that  we  saw  it  in  our  father's  face  long  before  we  knew 
how  that  tender  and  gracious  affection  was  a  reflection  of 
the  true  glory  of  Jesus  Christ,  whose  spirit  lived  in  them 
triumphantly  and  made  our  father  and  mother  what  they 
were.  Then  followed  a  host  of  influences  in  our  lives, 
all  radiating  from  that  same  divine  center  of  unselfish 
love — brothers  and  sisters,  teachers,  friends,  associates, 
Christian  leaders  and  pastors,  great  loving  minds  of  the 
past  also,  that  spoke  to  us  through  books — a  thousand 
subtle  and  interweaving  appeals  to  what  is  noblest  in  us, 
all  springing  from  that  living  center  of  goodness,  and  all 
revealing  our  Father  in  heaven.  The  lines  fall  to  us 
in  pleasant  places,  we  have  a  goodly  heritage !  Why  ? 
Surely  not  because  we  are  so  superlatively  deserving, 
but  because  this  Jesus  so  immediately  and  powerfully 
lived  in  our  ancestors  and  still  lives  in  the  lives  of  His 
disciples  all  about  us.  Stupid  we  are,  and  blind  and  deaf, 
not  to  feel  the  incalculable  riches  of  the  love  that  has 
always  been  at  work  upon  us — the  imperishable  energy  of 
Jesus,  mediated  to  us  through  the  agency  of  those  who 
live  by  Him. 

A  few  days  ago  a  wretched  negro  murderer  was  hur- 
ried away  to  the  gallows.  He  was  not  fit  to  live,  and  he 
knew  it.  But  he  said  in  explanation,  and  said  truly,  that 
he  had  never  had  a  chance.  Kicked  into  the  world  and 
forsaken  by  cruel  parents,  kicked  and  beaten  and  abused 
through  all  his  childhood,  growing  up  among  drunken 
criminals  in  ignorance  of  any  better  thing,  despised  and 
feared  by  society,  his  hand  was  against  every  man,  and  he 


THE  B RINGER  OF  LOVE  31 

died  as  he  had  lived,  undesired  and  unloved.  Against  that 
lurid  background  we  can  measure  something  of  our  in- 
debtedness to  Him  who  has  caused  our  life  to  be  actually 
rooted  and  grounded  in  Christian  love — in  the  pervasive 
reality  of  a  divinely  helpful  sympathy,  reflected  on  us 
from  infancy,  from  a  hundred  angles,  because  Jesus  still 
reproduces  His  gentleness  in  the  hearts  of  men.  That  is 
the  way  God  most  evidently  makes  Himself  known  to  our 
generation,  through  the  lives  of  men  and  women  brought 
into  spiritual  contact  with  Him  by  the  agency  of  an  Elder 
Brother,  the  great  friend  of  men.  It  is  a  great  League 
of  Love  and  Light,  with  our  God  at  its  head.  And  as  a 
maitter  of  fact  and  history  and  experience,  men  discover 
it  and  come  into  it  under  the  leadership  of  this  man  of 
Nazareth,  whose  fervent  friendship  made  him  a  Man  of 
Sorrows.  That  is  why  he  still  has  the  name  that  is  above 
every  name,  because  he  leads  through  love  to  life. 

"Through  love  to  light!     O,  wonderful  the  way 
That  leads  from  darkness  to  the  perfect  day ! 
From  darkness  and  from  sorrow  of  the  night 
To  morning  that  comes  singing  o'er  the  sea." 

Let  us  not  leave  this  phase  of  our  subject  without  re- 
membering once  more  how  exquisite  and  supreme  a  ser- 
vice Jesus  renders  to  human  life  when  He  attunes  it  to 
love  as  its  major  key.  No  conceivable  degree  of  good 
fortune  in  material  things  is  quite  equal  in  value  or  perma- 
nence to  this  blessing.  More  and  more  as  Hfe  goes  on, 
one  may  apply  to  love  the  acid  test  and  prove  its  unap- 
proachable primacy  among  all  human  possessions. 

Nothing  makes  this  more  clear  than  the  clairvoyant  re- 
appraisal of  life's  values  that  comes  with  severe  illness. 
After  certain  days  or  weeks  of  invading  pain  and  weak- 


32        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

ness,  one  reaches — perhaps  with  a  half-conscious  sense  of 
reHef — a  day  when  one  no  longer  thinks  of  this  world  as 
his  own.  Its  pursuits  have  slipped  away  from  him, 
perhaps  forever.  Its  boisterous  appeals  to  his  life-long 
interest,  in  business  or  politics  or  literature  or  reform, 
quite  fail  to  reach  his  spirit  in  the  strange  border-land 
of  detachment  where  he  now  lives,  with  only  the  nurse 
and  the  doctor  and  the  weary  struggle  for  rest  as  his 
chief  concerns.  But  when  he  has  come  into  these  deep 
waters,  where  he  finds  no  standing-ground  at  all,  and 
where  all  his  possessions  have  suddenly  lost  value  and 
faded  out  into  vague  unreality,  when  he  gropes  con- 
fusedly for  some  reality  on  which  his  mind  may  rest  with 
comfort,  then  love  remains  supreme,  alone.  Nothing  can 
rob  him  of  its  power.  His  work  may  be  finished,  but 
by  God's  mercy  he  can  still  love — the  noblest  part  of  him 
still  lives,  faintly  felt  but  invincible.  His  wife,  his  chil- 
dren, his  friends,  the  neighbors  who  daily  send  in  re- 
membrances of  their  loving  sympathy,  and  those,  too,  who 
have  long  since  passed  into  that  other  world  now  so  near 
— yes,  and  his  Father  in  heaven  also,  who  has  loaded 
life  with  benefits — he  is  conscious  that  they  love  him  and 
he  loves  them  all,  and  that  even  the  waters  of  death  can- 
not drown  that  undying  part  of  himself.  And  with 
even  greater  restfulness  he  knows  that,  as  never  before, 
their  love  now  encompasses  him:  it  watches  by  his  bed- 
side, it  suffers  with  his  suffering;  his  Father  is  with  him 
in  the  dark  and  pain,  and  nothing  can  spoil  that  assurance, 
or  quite  loosen  its  hold  upon  him.  He  cannot  think  of  the 
great  doctrines,  his  spirit  may  be  too  dulled  for  prayer 
— but  believing  in  Jesus  he  knows  that  love  is  there  with 
him,  that  it  will  not  leave  him  as  the  world  slips  away, 
and  that  it  will  even  be  waiting  for  him  when  he  ventures 


THE  B RINGER  OF  LOVE  33 

out  solitary  into  the  infinite  unknown.  The  whole  wide 
universe  has  nothing  else  that  reaches  or  relieves  him  in 
his  extremity — but  underneath  are  the  everlasting  arms 
of  love. 

Is  that  not  a  rare  imperishable  essence  that  Jesus  in- 
fuses into  life?  And  would  any  man  in  his  senses  speak 
slightingly  or  patronizingly  of  Him  who  enriches  life's 
relationships  with  this  enduring  fragrance?  Yet  if  hu- 
man consciousness  bears  unhesitating  witness  to  any  ex- 
perience in  life  it  is  to  this,  that  we  love  because  He  first 
loved  us.  He  also  that  abideth  in  love  abideth  in  God. 
This  is  the  faith  that  Jesus  brings  to  men  and  women  of 
today. 


Chapter  III 
THE  LEADER  IN  RIGHTEOUSNESS 

In  that  imperishable  classic  of  the  soul,  the  Shepherd 
Psalm,  one  of  the  great  affirmations  runs,  **He  leadeth 
me  in  the  paths  of  righteousness  for  his  name's  sake." 
Imagination  tends  rather  to  catch  on  the  opening  sentences 
— on  the  idyllic  pictures  of  the  green  pastures  and  the 
still  waters,  and  even  on  the  valley  of  the  dark  shadow, 
with  the  shepherd  safely  leading.  But  after  all,  we  know 
that  the  very  heart  of  the  poem  is  in  this  central  emphasis 
on  the  paths  of  righteousness.  Here  is  the  deep  reason- 
able foundation  that  underlies  the  truth  of  all  this  high 
imagining.  It  is  because  God  leads  forever  in  ways  of 
righteousness,  that  His  children  may  sing  confidently  of 
pastures  green  and  living  waters.  Other  paths  there 
are  that  lead  into  the  desert  and  to  death.  But  it  is  not  our 
Father  who  leads  His  children  there.  His  righteousness 
is  like  the  great  mountains.  Justice  and  judgment  are 
the  habitation  of  His  throne. 

And  so  most  naturally,  when  Jesus  was  seeking  to  make 
men  understand  what  God  was  like.  He  filled  this  ancient 
psalm  full  of  new  meaning  and  reality.  He  gave  it 
substance.  He  brought  it  within  men's  understanding, 
and  gave  it  a  deathless  hold  on  their  loyalty  and  affection. 
For  when  it  spoke  by  faith  alone  of  Jehovah  as  the 
Shepherd  of  His  people,  was  not  Jesus  in  visible  reality 
the  Good  Shepherd?     Did  He  not,  before  men's  eyes, 

34 


THE  LEADER  IN  RIGHTEOUSNESS  35 

Himself  walk  through  the  valley  of  the  shadow,  and  there, 
seeing  the  wolf  coming,  give  His  life  for  the  sheep?  He 
made  the  colors  of  that  old  picture  glow  with  the  splendor 
of  the  tenderness  of  God.  And  most  of  all  did  He  give 
color  and  reality  to  this  central  affirmation,  He  leadeth 
us  in  the  paths  of  righteousness.  He  could  do  no  less 
if  God  indeed  were  to  shine  through  Him  on  the  ignorance 
and  unbelief  of  men. 

To  be  sure,  the  world  was  deadly  sick  of  righteousness 
in  a  way,  and  Jesus  had  need  to  present  it  in  some  new 
color,  if  he  were  to  make  men  really  hunger  for  it.  The 
scribes  and  Pharisees  were  always  before  them,  as  the 
unco  guid  were  always  before  the  eyes  of  Robert  Burns 
— and  little  help  either  of  them  brought  to  the  poor 
wastrels  of  their  time.  But  it  -makes  one  thank  God 
and  take  courage  that  Jesus  was  so  divine  as  to  put  God 
in  a  new  light,  so  that  very  weak  and  shifty  people  came 
naturally  to  a  steadfast  purpose  to  do  His  will — actually 
grew  into  righteous  people — because  the  whole  outlook 
of  their  life  was  changed.  No  doubt  it  was  love  changed 
it,  but  it  put  iron  into  their  character,  who  had  been  like 
reeds  shaken  by  the  wind.  Jesus  led  them  to  God,  and 
this  was  the  inevitable  result,  that  they  began  at  once  to 
grow  like  Him.  They  could  not  really  live  in  touch  with 
their  Father  and  not  think  His  thoughts  and  try  to  follow 
His  ways.  This  is  what  Jesus  did,  and  infallibly  does, 
before  our  eyes  today,  for  those  who  trust  His  leadership. 
He  commits  them  to  a  life  of  righteousness. 

It  is  something  as  normal  and  natural  as  any  other 
process  of  life.  We  need  to  be  clear  on  this  point,  for 
there  have  been  centuries  of  almost  impenetrable  mystery 
and  unreality  surrounding  it.  The  words  and  example 
of  Jesus  Himself  leave  us  in  no  doubt  of  the  central  fact, 


36        PLACE  OF  JESUS-  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

so  simple  and  yet  infinite  in  scope.  He  came  to  put  men 
right  with  God,  in  the  only  possible  way,  by  leading  them 
to  choose  to  do  His  will.  When  a  woman  out  of  the 
crowd  called  out  in  her  enthusiasm,  "Happy  is  the  mother 
who  bore  you,"  with  its  suggestion  of  an  inner  circle  of 
God's  favored,  Jesus  answered,  "Yea  rather,  blessed  are 
they  that  hear  the  word  of  God  and  keep  it."  Again  he 
said,  "Not  every  one  that  saith  unto  me,  Lx)rd,  Lord,  shall 
enter  into  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  but  he  that  doeth  the 
will  of  my  Father  which  is  in  heaven."  Nothing  was 
greater  or  wiser  or  better  than  just  to  do  right  in  God's 
sight.  And  when  someone  told  Him  in  the  house,  "Thy 
mother  and  thy  brethren  stand  without  desiring  to  speak 
with  thee";  He  answered,  "Whosoever  shall  do  the  will 
of  God,  the  same  is  my  brother,  and  sister,  and  mother." 

This  is  what  Jesus  was  trying  to  bring  about  in  the 
people  whom  He  met  from  day  to  day — something  very 
plain  and  simple,  but  very  real  and  searching.  They  were 
to  choose  God's  will  just  as  children  are  loyally  obedient 
to  their  father.  A  little  girl  in  His  audience  could  under- 
stand that,  or  a  peasant,  or  household  drudge.  But  for 
many  centuries  the  Church  has  wrapped  this  central  pur- 
pose of  Jesus  round  with  mystery  and  puzzling  difficulty, 
so  that  its  appealing  simplicity  has  been  much  obscured. 

How  many  of  us  can  sympathize  keenly  with  Harriet 
Beecher  Stowe,  when  she  was  a  little  girl  in  the  parsonage 
at  Litchfield.  With  all  her  heart  she  longed  to  be  right 
with  God  and  to  do  His  will  as  one  of  His  children :  but 
how  she  was  to  cross  the  line  from  being  a  child  of  wrath 
to  being  a  daughter  of  the  household,  she  could  not  see. 
Her  father's  doctrinal  sermons  were  no  more  intelligible 
to  her  "than  if  they  had  been  in  Choctaw,"  and  from 


THE  LEADER  IN  RIGHTEOUSNESS  37 

month  to  month  she  was  held,  miserable  and  afraid,  out- 
side the  threshold,  longing  to  enter  in. 

And  then  one  day  her  father  preached  a  communion 
sermon,  without  notes,  straight  from  his  true,  warm  heart, 
on  Jesus  as  a  friend  offered  to  every  human  being.  "For- 
getting all  his  hair-splitting  distinctions  and  dialectic  sub- 
tleties, he  spoke  in  direct,  simple,  and  tender  language  of 
the  great  love  of  Christ."  Harriet,  then  fourteen  years 
old,  listened  with  growing  wonder  and  delight,  her  ''whole 
soul  illumined  with  joy."  She  chose  to  follow  Jesus' 
call  as  naturally  and  eagerly  as  a  sheep  might  follow  its 
shepherd,  and  she  went  home  that  day  in  a  new  world  of 
gladness  and  peace,  to  tell  her  father  she  had  become  a 
Christian.  She  had  run  in  under  his  guard,  so  to  speak, 
and  was  safe.  And  he,  like  a  good  father,  was  too  wise 
to  turn  her  back  into  the  wilderness,  though  she  had 
come  into  the  fold  in  a  strange  way  and  with  dangerous 
ease. 

But  when  next  year  she  went  to  Hartford,  and  made 
application  to  be  received  into  the  church  there,  the  pastor 
— trusted  friend  of  Dr.  Beecher's — turned  to  the  timid 
little  girl,  after  her  simple  confession  of  faith  and  love, 
and  said,  "Harriet,  do  you  feel  that  if  the  universe  should 
be  destroyed,  you  could  be  happy  with  God  alone?"  The 
awful  picture  was  hardly  to  be  realized  on  the  instant,  but 
she  faltered,  "Yes."  The  doctor  continued,  "You  real- 
ize, I  trust,  in  some  measure  at  least,  the  deceitfulness 
of  your  heart,  and  that  in  punishment  for  your  sins  God 
might  justly  leave  you  to  make  yourself  as  miserable  as 
you  have  made  yourself  sinful?"  Again  she  whispered, 
"Yes,"  but  the  old  torturing  fears  and  perplexities  had 
returned  upon  her :  the  path,  then,  could  not  be  so  simple 


38        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

as  it  seemed :  and  it  was  years  before  she  again  fought  her 
way  through  the  wilderness  into  the  pleasant  light  of 
the  simple  invitation  of  Jesus. 

If  we  of  today  have  swung  over  to  the  opposite  extreme, 
it  is  most  natural  and  wholesome  and  inevitable,  after  the 
doctrinal  refinements  of  many  centuries  have  so  often 
oi)Scured  the  primary  intent  of  Jesus'  message  to  man- 
kind. He  was  trying  to  turn  the  hearts  of  the  children  to 
the  Father,  that  they  might  do  His  will — there  in  Galilee 
— as  it  is  done  in  heaven.  And  still  this  is  the  place  He 
holds  among  men — with  no  lesser  or  more  puzzling  aim 
than  this,  that  they  should  walk  as  forgiven  children 
the  ways  of  God.  He  confronts  all  men,  everywhere, 
with  this  primary  demand  for  righteous  living,  and  He 
leads  the  way,  so  that  they  may  be  able  to  follow.  The 
mystery  of  infinite  love  encircles  it  all  around,  -but  the 
human  duty  and  privilege  are  in  homely  terms  that  all 
fathers  and  sons,  all  mothers  and  daughters,  can  under- 
stand. 

Never  was  the  world  less  able  to  dispense  with  such 
leadership  as  this.  It  needs  to  hear,  clear  as  a  trumpet 
call,  the  divine  authoritative  demand  for  righteousness. 
It  is  the  supreme  need  of  the  hour,  even  though  society 
has  fallen  out  of  humor  with  it,  and  prefers  the  witty, 
mocking  voices  of  its  own  prophets.  No  one  questions 
that  the  people  of  the  nations  are  sick  with  longing  for 
quietness,  and  peace,  and  far-stretching  sunny  vistas  of 
security  and  good-will.  Everywhere,  beneath  gaiety  and 
misery  alike,  is  a  fierce  unrest  and  discontent  with  the 
present  order.  Men  seek  for  some  new  lubricant  for 
the  wheels  of  civilization.  A  League  of  Nations  might 
answer,  or  a  Peace  Court  at  the  Hague,  or  a  non-competi- 
tive industrial  system,  or  some  Sweeping  social  readjust- 


THE  LEADER  IN  RIGHTEOUSNESS  39 

ment.  Something  new  must  be  found  to  check  the  dis- 
integrating forces  visibly  at  work  on  every  side. 

Yet  what  is  needed  is  nothing  new.  It  is  something 
so  prosaic,  old-fashioned,  and  sternly  uninviting  as  right- 
eousness— so  commonplace,  so  Puritanic,  so  Philistine  in 
its  uncouth  associations !  Can  any  reasonable  man  sug- 
gest an  alternative?  If  he  could,  if  some  very  clever  per- 
son could  find  a  better  way,  then  Christainity  would  col- 
lapse speedily,  as  so  many  have  been  expecting  it  to  do, 
for  a  thousand  years  and  more.  But  until  that  new 
prophet  has  appeared,  to  introduce  a  social  force  more 
constructive  than  Jesus  offers,  we  of  this  day  must  be- 
lieve in  Jesus  just  because  He  holds  men  so  firmly  and  un- 
compromisingly to  God's  order — the  order  of  His  Father's 
kingdom.  He  summons  men  individually  to  yield  their 
lives  to  God's  direction.  There  is  something  splendid, 
something  m.ajestic,  about  the  life  He  calls  them  to- — a 
life  rooted  in  the  Eternal  Goodness.  But  that  is  just  the 
place  that  Jesus  fills  in  the  world  of  today,  the  place  of 
one  who  undoubtedly  does  lead  men  to  this  high  fellow- 
ship with  the  Unseen — a  fellowship  in  righteousness. 

What  is  the  infallible  note  of  an  honest  association 
with  Jesus,  such  as  might  warrant  one  in  being  called 
Christian?  An  acute  student  of  the  races  of  the  Near 
East  has  recently  said  that  "in  the  Levant  the  typical 
Christian  is  an  accomplished  liar,  and  abject  coward,  and 
a  noxious  parasite,  pimp,  and  pander."  Even  if  we  dis- 
count this  fifty  per  cent,  for  possible  prejudice  or  exag- 
geration, the  statement  still  concurs  with  history's  esti- 
mate of  Byzantine  Christianity  for  a  millennium. 

That  is  the  ty'pe  of  Christianity  that  ''failed  to  prevent" 
the  late  war.  A  "Christian  Europe,"  on  such  formal  and 
quite  illusory  lines  as  these,  is  the  one  that  threatens  in  a 


40        PLACE  OF  JESUS-  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

few  years  to  take  up  war  again,  for  frankly  selfish  pur- 
poses. Whatever  "Christian"  may  mean  in  such  connec- 
tions as  this,  it  evidently  does  not  mean  the  actual  religion 
of  Jesus,  or  anything  resembling  it. 

What  is  it  that  the  spirit  of  Jesus  still  demands  of 
men  today,  and  what  does  He  make  of  men  and  women 
who  actually  follow  Him? 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  average  man's  idea  of  religion 
that  makes  one  acceptable  to  God  is  a  strange,  impossible 
compound.  It  has  to  do  with  baptism,  and  the  Church, 
and  believing  many  things  one  does  not  understand,  with 
setting  up  to  be  more  pious  than  other  men,  with  Bible 
reading  and  saying  prayers  and  attending  meetings.  On 
the  other  hand,  Donald  Hankey  has  left  us  an  unforget- 
able  picture  of  the  average  man's  religion  or  ideal,  as  it 
came  to  the  front  in  the  field  life  of  the  British  army. 
We  cannot  do  better  than  study  it  a  moment,  familiar  as 
it  is,  to  see  how  it  compares,  not  with  conventional  church 
religion  but  with  what  Jesus  demands  and  measurably 
secures  from  those  who  follow  Him. 

The  average  man — so  Hankey  says — may  be  immoral 
or  irreligious,  but  there  are  certain  moral  qualities  he 
admires  and  others  that  he  despises.  He  admires  courage, 
generosity,  practical  kindness,  honesty,  persistence  in  try- 
ing to  do  the  right  thing.  He  despises  meanness,  physical 
fear,  moral  cowardice,  instability,  equivocation,  narrow- 
mindedness,  subservience  to  rank  or  power  or  wealth. 
He  hates  *'swank,"  cant,  cruelty.  Singularly  enough,  as 
Hankey  reminds  us,  this  picture  so  far  as  it  goes  is  like 
the  ideal  of  the  gospel — it  fits  in  with  what  Jesus  taught. 
It  would  be  easy  to  point  out,  item  by  item,  how  Jesus 
nobly  presented  the  very  qualities  the  enlisted  man 
admires,  how  He  fought  with  the  things  despised,  and  how 


THE  LEADER  IN  RIGHTEOUSNESS  41 

completely  He  loathed  the  cruel  pride  and  insincerity  that 
honest  men  detest. 

And  yet  the  average  man  scarcely  associates  this  moral 
ideal  of  his — this  working  religion — either  with  Jesus  or 
with  his  Church.  It  shows  how  dreadfully  out  of  joint 
present  religious  conditions  are,  that  the  very  type  of  char- 
acter Jesus  came  to  bring  should  not  even  be  associated 
with  him  in  the  popular  mind,  but  that,  instead,  the  mes- 
sage of  Jesus  should  be  identified  with  a  puzzling  mass  of 
ecclesiastical  teachings  that  the  average  man  turns  away 
from  as  impossible  or  unreal. 

This  is  certainly  r^t  altogether  the  fault  of  the  Church. 
It  has  struggled  wiih  its  task  heroically,  but  it  has  been 
clogged  by  a  heavy  burden  of  tradition  relentlessly  im- 
posed upon  it  for  centuries,  and  it  has  often  failed  to  put 
first  things  first.  Many  of  the  unrealities  the  average  man 
objects  to  become  as  real  and  natural  as  living  itself, 
when  one  has  made  the  acquaintance  with  Jesus  and  has 
come  humbly  back  to  God.  Moreover,  the  ordinary  man 
in  the  street  has  an  insincerity  and  a  cant  of  his  own, 
when  he  talks  about  the  kind  of  religion  that  appeals  to 
him.  As  Hankey  points  out,  he  is  often  abominably 
selfish  in  his  pleasures,  and  his  actual  living  is  stained  with 
the  moral  cowardice  he  affects  to  despise.  There  is  a 
good  deal  of  camouflage  about  his  profession  of  ideals. 

But  with  Jesus  there  is  no  cant  or  camouflage  what- 
ever. He  stands  for  the  average  man's  ideal  of  righteous- 
ness, quite  without  reservation.  Not  as  something  to  be 
put  on  as  a  garment,  but  as  the  natural  living  out  of  an 
inward  spirit — the  doing  right  because  one  is  right.  And 
He  asks  a  good  deal  more  than  does  the  ordinary  man — as 
we  should  expect.  Even  we  feel  that  we  need  a  more 
exacting  guide  and  leader  in  matters  of  righteousness  than 


42        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

the  man  from  the  trenches.  The  voice  of  the  people,  as  a 
matter  of  history,  is  not  apt  to  be  quite  like  the  voice  of 
God,  nor  are  the  thoughts  of  the  crowd  Hke  God's 
thoughts  in  the  concerns  of  the  soul.  And  Jesus  leaves 
the  crowd  utterly  behind  in  the  requirements  he  lays  on 
men — he  outruns  all  our  feeble  ideas  of  unselfish  helpful- 
ness. He  teaches  that  a  man  should  not  try  to  crowd  to 
the  front  of  the  procession.  "If  any  man  would  be  first," 
He  said,  "he  shall  be  last  of  all  and  minister  of  all."  He 
took  on  Himself  the  servile  office  of  washing  their  feet, 
saying,  "If  I,  then,  the  Lord  and  the  Master,  have  washed 
your  feet,  ye  also  ought  to  wash  one  another's  feet."  He 
firmly  demanded  self-mastery  for  the  purpose  of  love, 
purity  in  deed  and  thought,  and  faithfulness  in  duty — 
where  popular  thought  only  hesitatingly  follows  Him. 
And  before  and  above  all  He  sets  His  two  great  command- 
ments, that  we  should  love  God  with  all  our  heart,  and  our 
neighbor  as  we  love  ourselves.  We  have  to  admit  that 
this  is  not  average  religion  anywhere,  and  that  society 
must  always  stand  in  need  of  a  strong  Leader  and  Helper 
if  it  is  to  come  to  righteousness  such  as  this. 

We  have  to  admit  regretfully,  also,  that  the  Church  has 
not  always  kept  this  phase  of  Jesus'  teaching  to  the  fore. 
Jesus  Himself  unquestionably  placed  it  in  the  very  fore 
front,  as  primary  and  indispensable  for  all  who  would 
follow  Him.  But  the  early  Church  had  its  attention 
quickly  diverted  from  what  Jesus  said,  to  what  the  Church 
authorities  demanded.  It  is  a  genuine  comfort  to  remem- 
ber this,  for  only  so  is  it  possible  to  understand  or  explain 
why  the  living  gospel  of  God  so  sorrowfully  languished 
for  centuries  in  the  great  needy  world.  For  a  thousand 
years  the  common  people  did  not  have  in  their  hands  the 
gospel  records  with  Jesus'  words  placing  the  doing  of 


THE  LEADER  IN  RIGHTEOUSNESS  43 

God's  will  above  all  else,  but  they  did  have  ever  in  their 
ears,  emphasized  by  the  relentless  determination  of  the 
Church  to  crush  all  dissent,  this  paralyzing  summons,  still 
repeated  in  the  ears  of  millions : — 

"Whoever  will  be  saved,  before  all  things  it  is  necessary 
that  he  hold  the  Catholic  Faith.  Which  Faith  except 
everyone  do  keep  whole  and  undefiled,  without  doubt  he 
shall  perish  everlastingly."  Does  this  even  faintly 
remind  us  of  the  message  and  spirit  of  Jesus?  Can  we 
imagine  Him  adding,  after  a  bewildering  series  of  meta- 
physical subtleties  regarding  three  "uncreated  and  incom- 
prehensible" Persons  in  the  Godhead,  "He  therefore  that 
will  be  saved  must  thus  think  of  the  Trinity"?  Nor  can 
we  conceive  of  Him  who  was  the  Friend  of  Sinners  going 
on  to  say  to  His  diciples,  "It  is  necessary  to  everlasting 
salvation  that  you  also  believe  rightly  in  the  Incarnation." 
He  did  ask  without  ceasing,  as  John  so  often  reminds  us, 
that  men  should  believe  that  God  had  sent  Him,  so  that 
they  should  receive  His  message  as  truth  and  recognize 
His  mission  as  divine.  But  He  asked  men  to  think  not 
on  the  mystery  of  His  eternal  relation  to  the  Godhead,  but 
on  their  own  relation  to  their  brother — whether  he  had 
aught  against  them — and  to  their  Father  in  Heaven, 
whether  they  were  doing  His  will  in  love. 

Who  can  measure  the  loss  and  pity  of  it,  that  half  of 
intellectual  Europe  thinks  of  the  place  of  Jesus  in  the  life 
of  today  as  they  think  of  His  Church — despotic,  auto- 
cratic, suffocating  thought,  forbidding  inquiry,  insistent 
above  all  on  submissive  conformity  to  the  inherited  dogmas 
of  the  Great  Councils  of  antiquity?  Or  that  the  world 
of  labor  should  think  of  Jesus'  influence  as  the  "chloro- 
forming agency"  of  the  bourgeoisie?  Is  it  strange  that 
the  thinking  world  has  so  swung  away  from  Him  who 


44        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

came  to  lead  men  home  to  God,  when  His  demands  have 
been  so  piteously  misrepresented  to  them  for  fifteen  hun- 
dred years?  The  wonder  of  wonders  is  that  through  all 
these  centuries  the  true  Church  of  those  who  simply  heard 
His  words  and  did  them  has  kept  on  its  way  unbroken, 
believing  in  Him  with  joy  and  thankfulness,  and  follow- 
ing after  Him  till  death.  And  today,  in  the  face  of  all 
retrogression  and  apparent  decadence  of  faith,  there  is 
such  an  open  and  waiting  field  for  the  preaching  of  the 
real  Jesus,  the  Saviour  of  men,  as  there  has  never  been 
before  since  the  Near  East  first  listened  to  the  message. 

The  Jesus  of  today,  like  the  Jesus  of  Galilee,  is  a 
leader  in  righteousness  rather  than  a  leader  in  correct 
opinions :  and  just  in  proportion  as  men  give  attention 
to  Him,  and  trust  that  He  was  sent  of  God,  and  so  yield 
themselves  to  His  Mastership,  will  they  find  themselves 
walking  in  paths  both  of  truth  and  goodness,  such  as  lead 
men  by  green  pastures  and  still  waters. 

But  quite  apart  from  inherited  beliefs  and  enthusiasms, 
is  it  a  fact  that  Jesus  really  does  lead  men  in  these  difficult 
ways  of  righteousness  today?  Anyone  can  see  the  grave 
relaxation  of  moral  restraint  in  our  generation — 'the 
impatience  of  control,  the  feverish  demand  for  amusement 
and  ever  more  amusement,  the  all-prevading  appeal  to  sex, 
and  the  steady  degeneration  of  the  dance  and  the  movies 
and  popular  literature  in  obvious  response  to  this  appeal. 
The  tide  of  relaxation  and  self-indulgence  runs  danger- 
ously swift  for  the  young  men  and  women  who  have  to 
build  their  house  of  life  in  these  days  disordered  by  the 
world-wide  passions  unleashed  by  war.  Is  Jesus  actually 
more  than  a  fading  name,  a  hollowed  memory  from  which 
the  virtue  has  gone  out?  Now  that  there  is  so  much 
selfishness  and  uncertainty  and  doubt  abroad,  does  He 


THE  LEADER  IN  RIGHTEOUSNESS  45 

still  bind  men's  hearts  in  steadfast  allegiance  to  truth  and 
purity  and  love — in  leal  loyalty  to  God.  And  if  He  does 
it,  how  does  He  do  it  ?  Assuredly  one  has  need  to  reflect 
deeply  before  he  essays  to  answer  such  an  appeal  with 
confidence.  And  yet,  when  all  has  been  said  about  the 
sinister  forces  of  the  world  today,  the  experience  of  life 
takes  clear  form  and  gives  decisive  answer  in  some  such 
wise  as  follows. 

In  the  distributing  station  of  a  great  power  plant  there 
is  no  visible  sign  or  assurance  of  the  presence  of  tremen- 
dous forces.  An  ignorant  man  might  refuse  to  believe 
that  any  great  powers  were  gathered  there  for  service. 
And  yet  i)ehind  each  silent  shining  lever  lie  forces  as  swift 
and  powerful  as  lightning,  ready  to  leap  out  in  action 
serving  the  necessities  of  millions.  And  here  also,  in  spite 
of  its  lowly  origin,  is  this  divine  immeasurable  energy, 
flowing  from  Jesus  Christ  through  society  today  in  streams 
of  power,  building  up  men  in  righteousness — individual, 
social,  civic,  international — limitless  in  power  as  they  be- 
lieve in  Him,  bringing  moral  leadership  to  humanity  in 
ways  as  diverse  as  the  infinite  variety  of  human  need. 

It  springs  first  and  most  obviously  from  His  character 
' — His  life — His  example.  We  have  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment the  brief,  artless  story  of  His  life.  Any  man  of  note 
in  our  day  would  have  a  fuller  biography  than  this.  And 
yet  as  we  read  it  attentively  we  feel  its  extraordinary 
quality.  All  idea  of  its  being  an  invention,  like  the 
biography  of  a  character  in  fiction,  drops  away  from  us  at 
once  and  of  necessity.  By  every  instinct  of  the  soul  we 
recognize  it,  with  whatever  reservation  we  may  make  as  to 
details  we  do  not  understand,  as  the  true  story  of  a  true 
man.  If  there  is  such  a  thing  in  human  life  as  beauty,  or 
dignity,  or  majesty,  we  find  it  here.     It  lays  hold  on  the 


46        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

very  springs  of  our  being,  probing  our  inmost  thoughts, 
charming  us,  inspiring,  inviting,  filHng  us  with  strange 
desires,  breeding  hunger  for  better  things.  All  that  is 
noble  and  aspiring  in  us  revives  under  its  strange  incite- 
ment and  rouses  itself  to  make  response. 

Sometimes  we  may  wonder,  doubtfully,  whether  we 
really  do  make  such  response,  or  whether  our  apparent 
feeling  is  only  in  mechanical  conformity  to  the  conventions 
of  training  and  tradition.  Thank  God,  we  need  not 
suspect  the  genuineness  of  our  spiritual  reactions  to  such 
a  story.  It  draws  us  irresistibly,  because  in  us  is  some- 
thing— much  baffled  and  crowded  down — that  recognizes 
in  Him  our  true  estate,  the  very  type  of  man  that  we 
would  be.  If  He  were  here  now,  being  such  as  He  was. 
He  would  draw  us  infallibly,  as  has  no  man  we  have  ever 
met,  in  admiration  and  friendship  and  imitation.  All  of 
us  have  known  men  whom  we  have  made  our  heroes,  so 
noble  they  seemed  to  us,  so  great  in  helpfulness,  so  win- 
some and  enviable  in  character.  And  here  is  one  whose 
goodness  might  fairly  bring  us  to  our  knees  in  reverence 
— a  man  so  strong,  so  fearless,  so  gentle;  so  clean  and 
true  and  honorable  in  the  midst  of  all  life's  shuffling  and 
deceit;  so  full  of  sympathy  and  help  for  people  whom 
others  push  aside  or  tread  upon ;  so  radiating  trust  in  God, 
and  hope  unquenchable.  If  we  had  the  faintest  chance 
to  get  near  such  a  man  in  the  society  of  today  we  would 
seek  his  company  and  commit  ourselves  and  our  ambitions 
to  his  influence  with  eager  gladness.  A  little  of  his 
friendship  and  personal  attachment  would  make  this  often 
sordid  world  a  different  place  to  us.  His  very  aware- 
ness of  God  in  the  midst  of  this  blind  ruck  of  things 
would  of  itself  alone  draw  us  to  him  with  all  our  hearts, 


THE  LEADER  IN  RIGHTEOUSNESS  47 

in  a  hope  of  like  victory  over  the  down-drag  of  material 
circumstances.  Just  to  see  him,  as  a  beloved  physician, 
bending  over  the  sick  in  body  and  bruised  in  heart, 
making  rest  and  ease  and  hope  bloom  again  in  faces  worn 
with  pain,  would  pull  mightily  at  our  hearts ;  and  to  know 
that  he  was  able,  too,  to  bring  peace  of  soul  to  the  vicious 
and  despairing — would  we  not  follow  after  such  a  man 
today,  if  good  fortune  made  it  possible  for  us  to  be  at  his 
side! 

And  one  thing  more !  We  do  not  judge  of  the  wonder 
of  Jesus'  life,  as  His  first  friends  did,  only  by  what  they 
saw  in  Him.  We  have  seen  His  character  reproduced  in 
other  lives  swayed  by  His  spirit,  so  that  we  can  judge  how 
His  temper  works  out  under  innumerable  diverse  con- 
ditions, often  unfavorable — and  especially  in  this  wise, 
modern  world  that  we  call  our  own.  There  is  nb  doubt 
that  such  lives  vehemently  attract  us.  We  may  feel 
regrettable  limitations  in  some  of  them  from  their  train- 
ing or  mental  environment,  but  so  far  as  they  have  lived 
and  served  in  the  faith  and  friendship  of  Jesus,  they  have 
had  a  truly  heavenly  beauty,  and  they  stir  our  souls  with 
longing,  like  rare  music  or  a  memorable  sunset. 

One  can  see  this  principle  working  every  day  in  non- 
Christian  lands,  where  the  example  of  Jesus — however 
imperfectly  reproduced^ — is  thrown  up  against  a  back- 
ground of  national  religions  that  lack  redeeming  power. 
Men  who  love  their  country  see  hope  for  her  in  this  moral 
power  that  springs  from  Him.  Mr.  Wen  Shih  Ken,  re- 
cent Secretary  of  State  for  Chekiang  Provinces,  gives 
typical  expression  to  this  experience.  Mr.  Wen  was  re- 
ceived not  long  ago  into  the  Presbyterian  Church,  and 
gave  this  brief  statement  of  the  explanation  of  his  action. 


48        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

"My  first  impulse  towards  Christianity  was  re- 
ceived when  I  was  a  student  in  Tientsin.  The  stu- 
dents of  the  Medical  College  of  the  city  were  no- 
torious for  their  immorality.  Every  effort  was 
made  to  bring  about  their  reform  but  without  success. 
Finally  President  Liu  of  the  Medical  College  induced 
some  of  the  students  to  join  a  Bible  class  in  the  Tient- 
sin Union  Church.  At  first  there  was  no  perceptible 
change,  but  presently  surprising  results  came  out. 
Most  of  the  men  in  the  class  were  baptised.  They 
became  diligent  in  study,  patient  in  healing,  and  en- 
ergetic in  preaching  the  gospel  in  other  schools.  The 
evidence  furnished  in  the  lives  of  these  students  con- 
vinced me  that  God  had  real  power  to  make  young 
men  repent  and  to  purify  their  hearts.  .  .  . 

*T  have  decided  to  become  a  Christian  because  I 
wish  to  be  like  Christian  men  whom  I  have  observed 
■ — a  man  with  a  pure,  strong  heart,  strong  blood, 
true  patriotism,  and  perfect  zeal.  I  believe  that 
Christianity  is  able  to  save  China.  I  believe  the 
Bible  is  the  weapon  with  which  she  can  work  out 
her  salvation  and  face  the  civilized  world." 

No  doubt  power  flows  from  the  life  and  example  of 
Jesus — undying  power  so  long  as  men  are  men ;  even  from 
that  brief  sketch  preserved  in  the  gospels,  with  the 
appended  two  thousand  years  of  living  commentary  and 
illustration. 

The  same  creative  energy  for  righteousness  flows  from 
His  teaching — increasingly,  as  the  disappointing  centuries 
emphasize  its  unapproached  supremacy.  All  the  steadily 
mounting  knowledge  and  wisdom  since  His  time  have  not 
brought  us  more  vital,  searching  words  of  social  and 
spiritual  guidance  than  He  once  spoke  to  an  out-of-door 
crowd  of  peasants  on  a  hill-side  in  Galilee.  We  have  to 
stop  and  think — and  think  hard — to  realize  how  fruitful 
His  teaching  as  to  human  relations  has  become  in  this  last 


THE  LEADER  IN  RIGHTEOUSNESS  49 

century,  when  men  have  begun  to  look  intently  at  His 
words  rather  than  at  the  authorized  theological  system  of 
the  Church.  Most  men  today  are  ashamed  not  to  seem  at 
least  familiar  with  His  idea  that  honor  and  greatness  lie 
rather  in  serving  than  in  being  served- — although  even  so 
late  as  in  the  eighteenth  century  we  find  His  Church  look- 
ing for  the  most  part  in  another  direction.  His  repeated 
calls  to  brotherliness,  and  mercy,  and  forgiveness,  because 
of  our  common  kinship  with  God  as  our  Father,  echo  in 
the  ears  of  all  humanity  today,  as  though  they  belonged  to 
all  branches  of  the  human  family  by  right  of  birth:  and 
yet  their  growing  power,  already  immeasurable,  flows 
straight  from  Him  who  talked  of  these  strange  obligations, 
even  to  narrow  fanatic  Jews,  who  were  notable  haters 
even  in  that  harsh  Roman  world. 

We  remember,  too,  the  calm  assurance  with  which  He 
spoke  of  all  that  realm  of  reality  beyond  what  our 
physical  senses  grasp — of  the  over-shadowing  presence  of 
God,  of  His  goodness,  and  His  fatherly  care  in  the  midst 
of  a  world  of  cruel  forces  and  yet  more  cruel  men.  What 
astounding  revelation  He  brought,  also,  of  the  possibility 
of  moral  recovery  and  restoration  for  those  broken  by 
spiritual  failure  and  defeat.  Men  never  guessed  that  the 
way  back  to  God  could  lie  so  broad  and  open,  so  invit- 
ing with  the  promise  of  joy  again,  and  even  love,  for 
such  as  had  abused  love  and  poisoned  the  springs  of  joy. 
And  always  He  spoke  as  one  who  belonged  to  two  worlds 
— to  this  one,  to  which  he  was  subject  by  ties  of  flesh 
and  blood,  as  are  we  all:  but  also  to  the  world  of  the 
eternal  life,  already  begun  here  amid  earthly  days  and 
nights,  but  reaching  on  timelessly  to  horizons  only  known 
to  God. 

There  is  no  other  teaching  like  it  in  all  the  world — no 


50        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

other  influence  like  its  influence.  How  can  it  be  that  He 
retains  this  primacy  in  leadership,  when  our  generation, 
standing  as  it  were  upon  the  shoulders  of  all  that  have 
gone  before,  should  be  able  to  produce  seers  and  prophets 
such  as  the  weary  rank  and  file  of  humanity  have  never 
known  before?  All  sorts  of  cults  and  theosophies  claim 
our  attention,  and  some  of  them  have  much  of  truth  and 
inspiration.  Yet  when  we  come  to  view  them  closely 
they  are  at  best  but  reminders,  in  some  respect,  of  Him 
who  spake  as  never  man  spake.  The  world  simply  does 
not  take  them  seriously  when  they  claim  primary  authority. 
But  the  sayings  of  Jesus  radiate  the  unique  majesty  of 
authority  that  belongs  only  to  revelation^ — not  to  cleverness 
like  George  Bernard  Shaw's,  nor  to  the  crude  dogmas  of 
Mrs.  Eddy,  nor  the  transcendental  musings  of  a  philoso- 
pher like  Emerson,  but  to  him  who  alone  could  say  with- 
out bathos,  "I  am  the  truth."  When  he  says,  e.  g.,  to  the 
nations  of  today,  "Be  ye  therefore  merciful  as  your  Father 
is  merciful,"  He  speaks  with  profoundity,  and  authority 
as  well,  that  leave  men  silent,  as  if  listening  to  the  voice 
of  God. 

And  so,  amid  the  endless  uncertainties  through  which 
we  have  to  guide  our  way,  we  count  this  as  certainty,  that 
Jesus  and  righteousness  are  inseparably  linked.  His 
place  in  modern  life  is  such  that  He  and  social  righteous- 
ness are  simply  not  to  be  considered  apart.  H  we  are 
thoughtful  men  we  cannot  ignore  Karl  Marx.  How  much 
less  can  we  ignore — as  some  affect  to  do — Him  whose  life 
and  teaching  are  like  a  living  flame  in  their  power  to  re- 
buke evil  and  refine  the  good.  Whether  in  the  solemn 
loneliness  of  the  individual  spirit,  or  the  complicated  re- 
lationships of  classes  and  nations,  He  is  a  leader  in 
righteousness — in  all  the  paths  that  lead  through  human 
weakness  to  the  will  of  God. 


Chapter  IV 
AS  ARBITER  OF  DEBATED  THINGS 

There  are  certain  matters  of  grave  import,  that  men 
endlessly  debate.  Not  such  perennial  themes  as  the  high 
cost  of  living  or  the  way  of  a  man  with  a  maid,  that  one 
may  discuss  in  sheer  vacuity  of  mind.  But  certain  high 
matters  of  universal  and  perpetual  con'cern,  to  which  the 
human  spirit  turns  in  moments  of  clearest  vision  and 
deepest  self-consciousness.  The  American  Indians  used 
to  debate  these  problems  around  their  camp-fires  in 
northern  forests,  just  as  men  do  today  in  discussion  groups 
in  the  universities  or  under  desert  stars  in  Africa. 

They  are  matters  not  simply  of  speculative  interest^ — 
though  men  have  always  loved  to  speculate  about  them. 
They  are  intensely  practical — at  least  as  much  so  as  any 
other  phase  of  the  stormy  struggle  for  existence. 
Whether  my  life  tends  up  or  down,  whether  it  runs  into 
success  or  failure,  depends  largely  on  the  answer  that  I 
find  for  them.  One  man  loses  heart  and  commits  suicide, 
another  becomes  as  the  shadow  of  a  great  rock  in  a  weary 
land  for  thousands,  according  to  his  conclusions  on  these 
themes.  We  may  be  quite  unconcerned  about  them  for 
years — and  then  suddenly,  at  a  turn  in  the  road,  we  are 
met  with  an  insatiable  hunger  of  the  soul  for  light  and 
understanding.  We  may  think  ourselves  quite  superior 
to  what  we  consider  an  old-fashioned  concern  over  theolog- 
ical questions,  but  we  do  not  really  know  what  is  in  our 

51 


52        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

hearts  until  they  are  shaken  by  trouble  as  leaves  are 
shaken  by  the  wind.  Then  we  discover  new  longings  and 
new  needs.  A  house  built  on  the  sands  stands  up  as 
squarely  in  fair  or  foggy  weather,  and  makes  as  brave  a 
show  to  the  world,  as  one  built  on  rock :  but  when  the  clean 
hurricane  sweeps  in  from  the  ocean,  and  the  milk-white 
waves  break  through  and  flood  the  land,  then  is  the  testing 
time  when  one  thinks  about  foundations.  And  it  is  these 
foundation  realities  of  human  life  that  men  endlessly 
debate,  and  to  which  no  thoughtful  man  long  holds  him- 
self superior. 

Jesus  frankly  stated  that  He  came  to  throw  light  on 
these  problems,  whose  beginning  and  end  reach  into  the 
unseen.  He  said,  'T  am  come  a  light  into  the  world." 
He  said  again,  with  the  tense  earnestness  of  one  standing 
on  the  very  edge  of  death,  ''To  this  end  have  I  been  born, 
and  to  this  end  am  I  come  into  the  world,  that  I  should 
bear  witness  unto  the  truth."  Probably  He  is  the  only 
man  who  ever  ventured  to  say,  "I  know  whence  I  came  and 
whither  I  go."  So  great  a  sage  as  Confucius  deliberately 
refused  even  to  speak  on  these  questions.  He  would  not 
pretend  to  give  assurance  where  he  felt  he  did  not  know. 
"Not  knowing  life,"  he  said,  "how  can  we  know  death?" 
He  told  men  not  to  seek  to  inquire  whether  there  were 
gods  or  spirits.  Jesus  said,  "Ye  have  not  known  God, 
but  I  know  Him."  He  made  vast  pretensions  as  to  His 
wisdom  in  the  fundamental  concerns  of  the  soul.  The 
philosophers  and  theologians  of  His  time  he  called  "blind 
leaders  of  the  blind,"  but  of  Himself  He  said,  that  the 
man  who  trusted  His  word  and  acted  on  it  built  his  life 
on  rock.  These  are  staggering  assumptions  for  a  man 
who  never  had  as  much  school  education  as  we  who  read 
this  book.     What  are  we  to  make  of  them  ?    As  practical. 


AS  ARBITER  OF  DEBATED  THINGS  53 

open-minded  men  of  the  twentieth  century,  what  place 
are  we  to  give  to  Jesus  as  an  authority  in  these  problems 
as  apprehended  in  the  present  day? 

Of  course  there  are  various  attitudes  that  may  be  taken 
regarding  Him.  His  first  friends,  who  had  known  Him 
longest,  said  that  He  was  crazy.  This  is  what  His  own 
family  thought,  so  bewildered  were  they  by  His  assump- 
tion of  authority.  His  neighbors,  who  had  seen  Him  com- 
ing and  going  on  the  streets  for  years,  said,  "He  is  merely 
one  of  us  villagers,  what  is  the  use  of  paying  Him  any 
attention?  He  is  only  a  carpenter.  We  all  know  His 
sisters  here  in  town,  and  as  for  James  and  Joseph  and 
Simon  and  Judas,  His  brothers,  they  are  no  better  than 
we.  Whence  hath  He  this  wisdom  ?"  They  were  clearly 
jealous  of  Him  and  His  popularity.  Others,  among 
whom  were  the  leading  citizens  and  the  Church  leaders, 
who  should  have  known,  said,  "The  devil  is  in  Him." 

As  for  the  public  opinion  of  today,  the  only  uttterly 
foolish  and  indefensible  attitude  is  to  ignore  Him,  as 
so  many  do,  as  though  His  teachings  were  negligible  for 
men  so  modern  as  ourselves.  He  is  disregarded  by  many 
as  completely  as  though  He  taught  that  the  earth  is  flat. 
Some  typical  writers  discuss  these  topics,  which  He  lived 
and  died  to  make  luminous  to  men,  as  if  Jesus  had  never 
lived  on  earth  or  spoken  unforgettable  words  of  wisdom. 
Some  of  our  popular  novelists  make  great  show  of  an- 
alyzing human  life  in  its  realistic  completeness,  trailing 
hero  or  heroine  through  a  labyrinth  of  moral  and  spirit- 
ual perplexities,  and  yet  apparently  never  having  heard 
of  that  master  of  men  whom  none  can  wholly  forget  and 
whose  words  still  fall  on  life  like  sunlight  on  a  wintry  day. 
And  other  writers  and  teachers  come  to  conclusions  dia- 
metrically opposed  to  those  of  Jesus,  without  a  trace  of 


54        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

hesitation  or  misgiving,  as  though  His  teachings  were  Hke 
a  text-book  out  of  date,  worthless  save  as  a  curiosity. 

If  Jesus  had  taken  a  doctor's  degree  at  Jena,  if  He 
had  studied  at  the  Sorbonne,  and  if  He  had  the  cordial 
commendation  of  the  psychologists  and  philosophers  of 
our  leading  American  universities,  we  should  be  compelled 
to  listen  to  what  He  has  to  say.  But  as  it  is,  we  are 
forced  to  recognize  not  only  that  He  lived  in  times  pre- 
medieval,  but  that  he  was  not  even  one  of  the  intelli- 
gentsia of  His  day — just  a  workingman  in  a  country  vil- 
lage. What  place  has  He  as  arbiter  among  learned  men 
in  this  scientific  age  ? 

II 

He  has  the  place  of  an  unapproached  specialist  in  the 
things  of  the  spirit.  Even  though  He  were  despised 
and  forsaken  of  all  men,  we  could  not  attentively  face 
Him  without  perceiving  the  Master.  We  can  discuss 
Him  glibly  enough  when  He  is  out  of  sight,  but  when 
we  thoughtfully  consider  Him  as  He  is  presented  in  the 
gospels,  letting  mind  and  heart  weigh  well  His  words  and 
deeds,  we  feel — as  such  a  critic  as  Pierre  Loti  said — 
that  He  is  "inexplicable  and  unique."  There  is  no  man 
like  Him  in  spiritual  quality.  Even  the  callous  police- 
runners  of  His  day  sensed  the  fact  that  never  man 
spoke  as  He  did;  but  it  was  because  never  man  saw 
the  divine  realities  of  human  life  as  He  saw  them.  He 
looked  into  the  face  of  God  as  an  eagle  gazes  on  the 
sun.  The  eye  of  His  soul  was  undulled  with  sin — 
stainless  He  was,  where  to  be  stained  is  to  be  troubled 
in  vision,  as  we  are  troubled.  You  and  I  could  never 
read  both  human  heart  and  divine  thought  so  unerringly 


AS  ARBITER  OF  DEBATED  THINGS  55 

as  to  say  to  an  outcast  with  confident  authority,  Thy 
sins  be  forgiven  thee.  But  it  excites  no  wonder  to 
see  Jesus  assuming  as  a  matter  of  course  this  pre- 
rogative of  a  flawless  spiritual  insight  and  author- 
ity. 

He  did  not  hesitate  to  claim  for  Himself  the  place  of 
a  specialist,  such  as  no  university  of  today  could  secure 
for  its  department  of  ethics  even  had  it  the  wealth  of 
Rockefeller.  We  can  hardly  exaggerate  the  amazing 
quality  of  His  pretensions  as  a  moral  teacher,  or  the 
angry  disgust  they  created  in  His  time,  so  extravagant 
and  ridiculous  did  they  appear.  If  an  untaught  young 
man  from  Oklahoma  were  to  come  East  today,  announc- 
ing that  the  men  in  our  leading  schools  and  pulpits  were 
blind  leaders  of  the  blind,  and  that  the  truth  as  to  the 
religious  duties  of  mankind  was  with  him,  we  should 
hardly  do  him  the  honor  of  being  indignant.  We  should 
pass  him  by  as  a  brash  young  man.  But  Jesus  set  Him- 
self unhesitatingly  above  the  most  venerated  authorities 
both  of  the  past  and  of  His  own  time.  "Ye  have  heard 
that  it  hath  been  said  .  .  .  but  I  say  unto  you  .  .  ." — 
the  audacity  of  those  familiar  words  is  the  sublime  au- 
dacity of  one  conscious  of  being  the  supreme  specialist 
in  concerns  of  the  soul.  "One  greater  than  Solomon 
is  here,"  He  told  them — one  even  "greater  than  the 
temple,"  if  Jews  could  conceive  of  such  a  thing.  "Many 
prophets  and  kings  have  desired  to  hear  the  things  that 
ye  hear,  and  have  not  heard  them" — so  He  said  once  to 
His  disciples. 

There  is  nothing  ridiculous  to  us  in  these  assumptions 
— nothing  subtly  humorous,  when  seen  from  our  modern 
scientific  angle.  Abraham  Lincoln,  in  the  severest  stress 
to  which  a  human  spirit  groping  for  wisdom  could  be 
put,  found  them  superlatively  reasonable.     We  approve 


56        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

them.  They  are  justified  by  the  moral  power  and  glory 
of  the  speaker.  Nothing-  less  could  make  them  other  than 
grotesquely  impertinent.  He  Himself  based  them  on  the 
fact  that  He  spoke  for  God.  He  did  not  refer  His 
hearers  to  books  or  other  authorities  for  His  statements. 
He  said,  "As  the  Father  taught  me,  I  speak  these  things," 
Either  that  is  bosh,  or  else  it  is  of  awesome  and  mo- 
mentous consequence.  And  not  only  did  He  claim  the 
authority  of  the  specialist.  He  spoke  with  a  strange 
clairvoyant  insight  into  the  realities  of  the  spirit,  its 
fundamental  needs  and  capacities,  that  silences  our 
shallower  contentions.  It  imperiously  demands  assent. 
And  something  in  us  answers,  and  approves.  We  may 
feel  unable  or  unwilling  to  obey,  but  we  reverently  recog- 
nize a  higher  wisdom  than  our  own.  We  may  even  be 
in  a  critical  and  argumentative  mood;  yet  when  Jesus 
says,  "This  is  my  commandment  that  ye  love  one  another, 
as  I  have  loved  you,"  we  have  little  disposition  to  argue. 
"Whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should  do  to  you,  do 
ye  even  so  to  them."  "He  that  humbleth  himself  shall 
be  exalted."  "Blessed  are  the  pure  in  heart  for  they 
shall  see  God."  "God  is  not  the  God  of  the  dead  but 
of  the  living."  Words  like  these  leave  us  in  no  mood 
for  measuring  ourselves  with  Him.  Something  in  us 
surges  up  in  approval,  as  though  our  spirits  were  made 
to  respond  to  truths  like  these — truths  more  searching 
and  imperious  than  those  to  which  we  are  accustomed  in 
books. 

From  all  over  the  world  today,  from  soldiers,  and 
statesmen,  and  leaders  in  finance  and  industry,  one  could 
gather  fervent  approval  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus,  as  fur- 
nishing the  key  to  progress  in  this  new  century.     As  in 


AS  ARBITER  OF  DEBATED  THINGS  $7 

that  recent  "last  word  to  the  people  of  Great  Britain" 
from  Earl  Grey: — 

"It's  Christ's  way.  Mazzini  saw  it.  We've  got 
to  give  up  quarrelling.  We've  got  to  come  together. 
We've  got  to  realize  that  we  are  all  members  of  the 
same  family.  There's  nothing  that  can  help  human- 
ity, I'm  perfectly  sure  there  isn't — perfectly  sure^- 
except  love.  Love  is  the  way  out,  and  the  way  up. 
That's  my  farewell  to  the  world." 

It  is  a  striking  fact  that  the  modern  statesmen  of  the 
English-speaking  world,  the  men  of  affairs  who  are 
actually  carrying  the  world  burdens  as  freely  chosen 
representatives  of  the  people,  fall  back  upon  the  author- 
ity of  Jesus  as  the  supreme  arbiter  and  guide  for  our 
troubled  civilization.  Witness  that  recent  appeal  to  the 
"Citizens  of  the  British  Empire,"  issued  by  the  premiers 
of  the  British  Commonwealth  of  Nations,  in  which  they 
say: — 

"The  spirit  of  good-will  among  men  rests  on  spirit- 
ual forces :  the  hope  of  a  'brotherhood  of  humanity' 
reposes  on  the  deeper  spiritual  fact  of  the  'Father- 
hood of  God.'  In  the  recognition  of  the  fact  of  that 
Fatherhood  and  of  the  divine  purpose  for  the  world, 
which  are  central  to  the  message  of  Christianity,  we 
shall  discover  the  ultimate  foundation  for  the  re- 
construction of  an  ordered  and  harmonious  life  for 
men.  .  .  .  The  eternal  validity  and  truth  of  these 
spiritual  forces  are  in  fact  the  one  hope  for  a  per- 
manent foundation  for  world  peace."  (Signed  by 
Lloyd  George,  Louis  Botha,  and  the  premiers  of  the 
other  leading  colonies.) 

Our  own  leading  statesmen  for  fifty  years  past  would 

say  the  same. 

We  need  not  then  apologize  for  giving  to  Jesus  of 


58        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

Nazareth  as  attentive  a  hearing  as  to  the  latest  magazine 
writer  of  our  day.  If  any  portion  of  current  literature 
makes  us  feel  that  He  has  quite  dropped  out  of  consid- 
eration among  practical  men  of  this  century,  so  much 
the  worse  for  current  literature.  So  great  a  specialist 
was  He  in  the  things  of  God  that  His  appeal  to  men  is 
universal  and  timeless.  Soviet  Russia  may  utterly 
repudiate  Him,  but  Soviet  Russia  is  to  Jesus  Christ  as  a 
single  crashing  breaker  on  the  shore  is  to  the  vast  silent 
tidal  wave  swinging  endlessly  across  the  oceans. 

Ill 

What  is  it  we  most  need  to  know,  that  we  may  live 
our  life  today  and  tomorrow  ardently,  faithfully,  undis- 
couraged  by  rebuffs  and  failures?  What  but  the  truth 
about  God  and  his  relation  to  us !  If  that  should  link 
up  our  brief  career  with  His  glory,  making  each  unful- 
filled capacity  and  hunger  a  prophecy  of  what  shall  be 
when  His  plan  for  our  lives  is  complete,  then  even  earthly 
life  means  God  and  we  together,  working  to  an  end  He 
knows  and  desires.  Such  truth  would  make  life  great 
indeed.  All  social  efficiency  lies  behind  it.  But  who 
can  assure  us  of  such  truth?  Not  the  reviewers,  or 
essayists,  or  even  the  novelists  of  today!  Jesus  alone 
says  He  can.  He  said  of  God,  "I  know  him"' — said 
that  His  knowledge  was  direct,  personal,  unparalleled 
on  earth.  "No  one  knoweth  the  Father  save  the  Son." 
"The  world  knew  thee  not,  but  I  knew  thee."  In  this 
magnificent  confidence  He  won  for  Himself,  first  of  all, 
the  greatest  moral  victory  over  life  that  the  history  of 
our  race  has  known.  It  made  Him  socially  efficient — a 
physician,  a  minister,  a  saviour,  without  a  parallel.     This 


AS  ARBITER  OF  DEBATED  THINGS  59 

huge  assertion  of  His  self-consciousness  did  not  wreck 
Him — as  it  should  have  done  if  it  were  false — it  made 
Him  the  man  of  all  men;  it  gave  Him  the  name  that  is 
above  every  name.  It  accredits  Him  to  each  succeeding 
age  as  the  supreme  teacher  about  God  in  humanity.  So 
we  listen  with  moral  intentness  to  what  Jesus  has  to 
say.  None  other  can  do  for  us  what  He  can  do,  by 
bringing  Father  and  child  together  here  and  now.  He 
knew  how.  He  knows  how.  If  we  would  but  attend 
to  him,  and  believe  in  Him ! 

Again,  our  world  needs  inexpressibly  to  know  what 
this  God  of  Jesus  thinks  of  us.  Is  it  likely  that  He 
who  made  the  universe  thinks  of  us  at  all?  If  so,  what 
does  He  think  of  us,  in  the  few  poor  years  we  have  be- 
fore we  drop  out  of  sight  as  a  leaf  drops  in  the  forest? 
Is  it  possible  He  cares  for  our  infinitesimal  concerns? 
Jesus,  so  to  speak,  staked  His  life  on  the  fact  that  He 
cares.  When  we  read  an  essay  by  the  genial  John  Bur- 
roughs, asserting  that  God  does  not  care,  and  that  in 
any  case  we  know  nothing  of  Him,  then  whose  authority 
shall  we  accept,  that  of  John  Burroughs  or  of  Jesus? 
Which  is  the  greater  specialist  in  spiritual  things?  The 
one  who  belongs  to  our  time,  or  He  who  belongs  to  all 
times?  The  world  will  soon  forget  the  denials  of  the 
naturalist,  but  when  do  you  suppose  men  in  trouble  will 
forget  the  assurance,  "Not  a  sparrow  falleth  to  the 
ground  without  your  Father.  Be  of  good  cheer,  ye  are 
of  more  value  than  many  sparrows."  Humanity  prefers 
the  convictions  of  Jesus  to  the  doubts  of  the  sceptic,  not 
because  Jesus'  teaching  is  the  more  comfortable,  but  be- 
cause in  the  long  run  the  doubts  make  for  the  destruction 
of  society,  as  in  Bolshevism,  while  the  faith  of  Jesus 
makes  for  the  uninterrupted  integration  of  society  along 


6o        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

the  path  of  maximum  development.  Just  to  be  assured 
— as  Jesus  assures  us — that  the  very  first  demand  God 
makes  on  men  is  for  their  intelhgent  love,  is  to  be  lifted 
up  into  a  new  world  of  hopes  and  possibilities  and  obliga- 
tions. 

Again,  our  age  longs  to  know  whether  God  hears  us 
— can  we  speak  with  Him?  In  the  still  loneliness  of  the 
night  may  one  take  counsel  with  a  better  Friend  than 
any  we  know  on  earth?  Is  it  possible  that  here  among 
the  seductions  of  earth  we  may  actually  have  this  bracing 
fellowship  with  One  infinitely  better  than  ourselves. 
Prominent  scholars  today  may  tell  us  No.  The  question 
is  at  best  much  debated.  But  Jesus  says  to  the  man  or 
woman  of  today,  "Ask  and  ye  shall  receive."  **Pray  to 
thy  Father,  and  thy  Father  who  seeth  in  secret  shall 
recompense  thee."  Suppose  He  had  said,  as  some  say 
today,  "Ask  not  in  prayer,  as  the  heathen  do :  for  your 
Father  knoweth  what  ye  have  need  of  before  ye  ask 
Him."  Instead,  He  vindicated  God's  right  to  be  as  freely 
kind  as  the  average  man,  by  saying,  "If  ye  then,  being 
evil,  know  how  to  give  good  gifts  unto  your  children, 
how  much  more  shall  your  Father  who  is  in  heaven  give 
good  things  to  them  that  ask  Him?"  What  a  world 
this  would  be  if  men  trusted  the  judgment  of  Jesus  at 
this  point!  If  they  accepted  fearlessly  and  loyally  His 
confidence  that  God  is  as  helpful  as  a  human  father- — 
and  far  more  so. 

Jesus  does  not  hesitate  to  assume  the  reality  of  God's 
duties  to  men.  A  leading  preacher,  who  belongs  in 
thought  to  an  earlier  generation,  advertised  himself  the 
other  day  as  preaching  on  the  blasphemy  of  just  this 
assertion.  Yet  how  could  Jesus  set  forth  God  as 
Father,  and  leave  Him  without  duties  to  His  sons  and 


AS  ARBITER  OF  DEBATED  THINGS  6i 

daughters  except  by  special  covenant?  There  is  hardly 
a  more  beautiful  and  touching  sight  in  our  world,  than 
that  of  a  mother  holding  her  baby  in  her  arms.  The 
little  face,  still  smooth  in  serene  unconsciousness  of  care, 
gazes  up  into  its  mother's  face  with  unwinking  stare, 
perfectly  safe,  perfectly  content,  knowing  nothing  of  the 
thousand  dangers  that  would  beset  it  were  those  arms 
to  fail,  only  trusting  that  the  face  on  which  his  eyes  are 
fixed  is  his  own  happy  universe  of  security  and  promise. 
In  all  our  world  there  is  no  other  trust  so  perfect  or  so 
common.  Jesus  shared  it  when  He  lay  on  His  own 
mother's  breast.  And  wholly  knowing  this  sacrament 
of  parental  love,  He  used  it  to  make  luminous  His  gos- 
pel. He  called  on  men  everywhere  so  to  think  of  God, 
and  so  to  treat  Him  every  day,  as  the  One  who  had  made 
them  for  Himself.  Evidently,  if  one  believes  in  Jesus, 
the  sky  never  can  be  altogether  gray,  life  never  utterly 
forlorn — although  here,  as  everywhere,  it  is  the  great 
faith  that  reaps  the  great  reward. 

It  is  of  the  future  that  men  debate  most  eagerly,  as 
to  what  lies  behind  death's  inexorable  curtain.  Does  it 
hide  blank  nothing,  or  a  new  self-realization  pulsing  with 
life  and  promise?  At  times  it  has  been  the  mode  to  dis- 
miss the  question  with  a  blase  indiflFerentism,  as  if  man- 
kind had  grown  superior  to  hopes  bound  up  with  its 
intellectual  childhood,  and  were  ashamed  to  confess  to  so 
primitive  an  emotion.  We  have  passed  through  such 
a  time  within  the  memory  of  us  all.  But  whatever  the 
psychologists  and  essayists  have  been  saying  in  their 
class-rooms  and  reviews,  the  common  folk  in  life's 
trenches,  the  wives  and  husbands  and  fathers  and  moth- 
ers, the  old  and  lonely  and  sick  and  disappointed,  the 
unnoticed   millions    of    those   who   carry   on   grimly   in 


62        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

silence,  still  share  the  unquenchable  life  hunger — still 
cling  to  the  vanished  love  of  those  who  seem  to  have 
left  them  forever.  Should  any  doubt  it,  let  him  enter 
a  leading  bookstore  and  see  the  tables  loaded  with  "psy- 
chic" literature  bringing  a  babel  of  messages  from  that 
unknown  beyond — by  ouija  board,  by  automatic  writ- 
ing, by  mediums  and  spirits  of  every  description,  telling 
in  detail  of  conditions  in  the  life  to  come. 

Here  again  we  have  to  stop  resolutely  and  ask  our- 
selves what  place  is  to  be  reserved  for  Jesus,  as  an  au- 
thority amid  this  jostling  throng  of  clairvoyant  seers? 
He  is  manifestly  out  of  vogue,  and  quite  left  behind 
by  the  eager  crowd  who  find  Him  without  pungency  or 
flavor  in  comparison  with  disembodied  spirits  who  will 
discourse  every  evening,  if  duly  persuaded,  on  the  most 
minute  details  of  existence  on  the  spiritual  plane.  But 
when  the  fad  has  burnt  out,  and  the  crowd  has  passed  on 
to  something  else,  what  then  will  Jesus  have  to  say  to 
us  and  our  children? 

He  will  still  bring  the  unhesitating  assurance  of  eternal 
life.  His  argument  for  it  is  not  in  any  logical  demon- 
stration, but  simply  in  His  own  self-consciousness  and 
His  calm  insight  into  the  realities  of  the  spirit.  He  im- 
parts to  men  His  own  convictions,  by  sheer  force  of 
His  own  personality.  We  come  into  His  company  and 
under  His  influence,  and  presently  find  ourselves  sharing 
His  faith  and  assured  of  a  life  indestructible  by  death.  If 
we  come  under  the  influence  of  certain  men  of  our  time 
' — Theodore  Dreiser,  say,  and  his  school  of  fierce  con- 
tenders for  an  art  that  knows  neither  morality  nor  re- 
straint— faith  in  a  continuing  fellowship  with  God  be- 
comes almost  instantly  not  incredible  only,  but  puerile 
and  ridiculous.     In  the  same  way,  moral  and  intellectual 


AS  ARBITER  OF  DEBATED  THINGS  65 

sympathy  with  Jesus  speedily  opens  our  eyes  to  some- 
thing of  what  was  so  real  to  Him.  And  with  that  insight 
we  are  content :  we  do  not  even  feel  the  need  of  argument; 
we  are  satisfied,  as  with  knowledge  at  first  hand. 

What  Jesus  did  for  men  in  His  day  who  knew  Him 
was  to  show  how  unthinkable  was  fellowship  with  God  in 
terms  of  this  life  only.  It  was  a  fellowship  of  love, 
which  reached  out  every  day  into  the  eternal.  He  said 
to  those  first  enthusiastic  friends  in  Galilee,  who  were 
jeered  at  and  maltreated  for  His  sake,  ''Happy  are  you, 
for  great  is  your  reward  in  heaven."  They  were  to 
look  up  and  on.  When  He  had  been  preaching  to  the 
poor  and  healing  the  sick  through  a  hot  summer  day  in 
the  villages,  He  slipped  out  in  the  cool  of  the  night  to 
talk  with  God,  thus  holding  fast  to  His  brethren  and  to 
His  Heavenly  Father,  as  with  either  hand.  When  His 
eyes  were  just  closing  to  the  last  dread  sights  of  Calvary 
He  said,  ''Father,  into  Thy  hands  I  commend  my  spirit.'* 
All  along  the  way,  from  the  first  days  to  the  last,  He 
lived  and  spoke  as  one  related  to  two  worlds.  He  was 
bound  up  in  the  same  bundle  of  life  as  the  eternal  God. 
And  any  man  who  closely  attends  to  Jesus  Christ  today, 
inevitably  comes  to  share  this  consciousness  and  convic- 
tion. We  find  in  Him  a  supreme  authority  as  to  the 
mysterious  hinterland  of  earthly  life.  We  rest  in  His 
assurance  that  there  is  a  home  of  the  soul  with  wider 
and  more  glorious  horizons  than  these  hills  and  prairies 
and  oceans  that  shut  us  in.  Love  is  stronger  than  death 
and  God's  love  does  not  exhaust  itself  upon  us  here. 

But  if  we  pay  first  heed  to  the  voluble  spirits,  whom 
Sir  Conan  Doyle  so  vehemently  commends  to  our 
attention,  the  whole  scene  changes.  The  majesty  of  the 
glory   of   God — that   filled   the   anticipation   of   Jesus — 


64       PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

fades  out  miserably  into  an  existence  wholly  bounded  by 
human  imagination.  No  longer  does  the  ineffable  wonder 
of  God's  love  and  righteousness  fill  the  hearts  of  the 
children  who  have  found  their  Father's  'house.  No 
longer  is  the  clear  vision  of  Jesus  Christ  the  joy  of  men 
and  women  He  has  redeemed.  All  expectation  of  being 
like  Him,  when  we  see  Him  as  He  is,  drops  unhonored 
out  of  sight.  The  central  fact  of  that  existence  is  no 
longer  a  divine  enlargement  that  "hath  not  entered  into  the 
heart  of  man  to  conceive." 

Instead  we  have  an  ever-changing  composite  of  the 
views,  often  most  attractive  and  uplifting,  of  men  and 
women  like  ourselves — Unitarians,  Christian  Scientists, 
exponents  of  New  Thought,  spiritualists,  conventionally 
orthodox,  of  every  shade  of  religious  training  and  in- 
sight. It  is  a  bewildering  labyrinth  of  conflicting  coun- 
sels, always  haunted  by  the  admitted  presence  of  "lewd 
spirits  of  the  baser  sort,"  seeking  to  break  in  by  unworthy 
channels  and  confuse  the  truth.  If  once  we  part  com- 
pany with  the  serene  confidence  of  the  Great  Master,  and 
refuse  to  rest  in  his  calm  anticipation  of  God's  love  for 
ourselves  and  those  we  love,  then  suddenly  we  fare  forth 
into  a  region  of  mocking  plausibilities,  where  faith  at  any 
moment  may  break  down  and  leave  us  in  a  twilight  bleak 
and  chill. 

Here  we  recognize  the  fitness  of  Jesus  as  a  leader  for 
today.  He  made  no  effort  to  describe  what  transcends 
our  limited  human  understanding.  A  business  man  has 
no  language  in  which  to  make  his  little  boy  of  three  under- 
stand the  complexities  of  financial  credit  and  exchange. 
The  little  lad  is  in  his  father's  world  and  has  the  same 
brain  and  potential  mental  capacity.  And  yet  just  for  lack 
of  a  few  years  of  development  he  cannot  faintly  compre- 


AS  ARBITER  OF  DEBATED  THINGS  65 

hend  his  father's  world.  There  is  no  language  in  which  it 
may  be  made  plain  to  him.  How  infinitely  wider  is  the 
chasm  between  our  physical  conditions  here  on  earth  and 
the  realm  of  spirit  that  transcends  all  earthly  experience 
and  imagination!  Jesus  said  in  simple  words  that  His 
followers  should  enter  into  the  joy  of  their  Lord;  that 
they  should  be  with  Him  and  behold  His  glory.  He 
said  also  that  they  should  still  carry  weighty  responsi- 
bilities in  the  service  of  His  Kingdom. 

And  so  we  may  be  content  for  those  we  love  who  "have 
the  misfortune  to  die."  They  are  in  the  hands  of  a 
tenderer  care  than  ours,  and  there  we  may  leave  them, 
without  nagging  pursuit  or  cross-examination  by  mediums 
or  ouija-boards,  in  the  strange  peace  of  God.  Jesus 
steadies  men  today  by  a  transcendent  hope,  built  up  on 
love,  instead  of  leaving  them  to  "a  puzzled  fumbling  with 
distracting  mysteries." 

"People  don't  believe  that  way  now" — so  we  are  told 
confidently  in  answer  to  any  argument  like  the  above. 
"Jesus  is  impossible  as  arbiter  in  these  matters  because 
He  is  quite  out  of  touch  with  the  trend  of  modern 
thought."  There  is  much  truth  in  this  last  contention. 
He  is  out  of  touch  with  current  thinking.  But  so  He  was 
long  ago.  So  He  has  always  been.  The  explanation  of 
it  lies  all  too  plainly  on  the  surface.  As  He  said  to  Peter 
when  Peter  differed  sharply  with  Him,  "You  mind  not 
the  things  of  God  but  the  things  of  men."  The  crushing 
humiliation  of  his  Master  by  evil  men  was  unthinkable 
to  Jesus'  friends.  It  was  not  unthinkable  to  redeeming 
love,  nor  to  those  in  sympathy  with  God,  but  self- 
interest  and  worldly  wisdom  could  make  nothing  of  it. 
And  here  is  the  infinite  worth  of  Jesus  to  society  in  our 
time.     He  does  not  represent  "current  thought."     With 


66        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

an  insight  divinely  clear  He  "minds  the  things  of  God." 
The  stream  of  eager,  excited  talk  flows  on — he  stands 
unmoved  as  the  revealer  of  our  Father's  will,  holy  and 
right  and  good.  So  we  lean  on  Him  as  arbiter.  We 
take  refuge  in  His  insight,  fearing  our  own  self-will  and 
ignorance. 

Jesus  then  has  this  place  in  the  life  of  today,  as  of  a 
light  shining  in  a  dark  place.  We  may  talk  as  much  as 
we  please  about  the  "decadence  of  the  church"  and  the 
"new  orthodoxy,"  but  it  is  truer  today  than  ever  it  was 
that  millions  would  die  for  Him,  intelligently  and  with- 
out hesitation,  through  sheer  devotion.  Whether  among 
the  Brahmans  of  New  England,  or  in  the  African  Congo, 
in  dazed,  unshepherded  Russia,  or  in  China  or  Armenia 
where  we  have  watched  so  many  noble  spirits  die,  among 
all  classes  and  cultures,  Roman  and  Greek  and  Protestant, 
men  and  women  are  at  the  core  of  their  hearts  loyal  to 
this  Jesus  who  opens  to  them  a  way  to  God.  They  rest 
upon  His  revelation  of  the  Father — they  trust  His  insight 
into  eternal  truth^ — they  believe  in  Him. 

Dr.  J.  H.  Hutton  of  Glasgow  has  given  in  one  of 
his  essays  a  most  arresting  definition  of  what  it  is  to  be  a 
Christian.  "A  Christian,"  he  says,  "is  one  who  pro- 
poses, God  helping  him,  to  go  on  to  embody  in  his  entire 
system  of  life  the  insight  into  things  which  Jesus  Him- 
self lived  by."  That  is  what  it  means  to  believe  in  Him. 
To  take  Him  as  arbiter!  To  live  by  His  insight.  To 
come  gradually,  as  His  friend  said,  to  "have  the  mind  of 
Christ"  in  all  problems  personal  and  social. 


Chapter  V 
THE  BRINGER  OF  THE  KINGDOM 

We  have  spoken  of  Jesus  as  the  bringer  of  love  into  the 
social  life  of  today.  Imagine  infinite  love  brought  into 
close  contact  with  the  cold  selfishness  of  such  a  world 
as  ours !  This  much  is  certain,  it  would  be  found  strug- 
gling mightily  with  hostile  forces.  It  would  find  itself 
confronted  with  a  staggering  task,  as  wide  as  the  world. 
We  cannot  conceive  it  as  quiescent  in  the  face  of  horrid 
wrong  and  cruelty.  It  could  not  be  simply  for  the  com- 
fort and  uplift  of  the  few  fortunate  souls  who  might 
be  willing  to  receive  it.  Divine  love,  suddenly  made 
operative  in  Armenia,  would  be  as  stern  as  death,  and 
tender  as  a  mother.  Wherever  in  our  world  it  might  pre- 
sent itself,  it  would  be  challenged  to  mortal  combat: 
always  it  would  face  the  need  of  heroic  self-assertion  and 
intense  activity. 

A  life  like  that  of  Jesus  in  the  midst  of  humanity  like 
ours  must  always  mark  the  center  of  a  world  conflict.  It 
stirs  up  trouble.  He  came  to  bring  not  peace  but  a  sword. 
Love  as  a  sentiment  may  be  placidly  airy  and  unsub- 
stantial, and  Christian  people  may  talk  much  about  it 
on  their  personal  way  to  heaven.  But  the  true  love  of 
God  on  earth,  honest  and  open-eyed,  is  an  aggressive 
energy,  always  involved  of  necessity  in  the  greatest  of 
all  good  fights — the  fight  for  the  Kingdom  of  God. 

And  that  is  the  place  of  Jesus  in  the  life  of  today — 


•68        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

He  is  the  heart  and  soul  of  the  cooperative  struggle  to 
make  God's  love  rule  on  earth.  The  reign  of  His 
Father's  good  will  in  the  lives  of  men  He  called  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven.  He  thought  of  it  as  realized  here 
on  earth,  and  equally  as  reaching  on  into  the  world  to 
come.  And  that  men  might  have  it  as  a  master  ambition 
in  the  very  forefront  of  their  living  and  thinking,  He 
left  them  this  prayer  for  a  constant  spur  and  reminder: 

"Thy  kingdom  come, 

Thy  will  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven." 

Manifestly  it  is  a  fighting  prayer,  for  all  true  hearts 
and  gallant  souls  who,  even  at  the  cost  of  ease,  would 
fain  leave  the  world  a  better  place  than  they  found  it. 
And  the  power  and  the  glory  of  it  as  a  prayer  are  in  the 
fact  that  it  links  up  our  fitful  impulses  of  benevolence 
with  the  steadfast  love  of  God,  triumphing  and  undis- 
mayed. The  odds  are  too  great  for  us,  the  ills  of  society 
are  too  deeply  lodged,  if  we  are  to  rely  only  on  our 
own  resources  and  our  sharply  limited  sympathy  and 
wisdom.  But  the  Lord  God  Omnipotent  reigneth !  and 
if  Jesus  binds  up  human  endeavors  with  His  plans  of  love, 
even  common  folk  can  play  an  honorable  part  with 
courage. 

Andrew  Carnegie  was  a  genuine  lover  of  his  fellow- 
men.  He  knew  the  seamy  side  of  life  and  the  hardships 
of  the  poor,  and  especially  he  hated  war  and  all  its 
grinding  oppression,  and  its  after-brood  of  miseries  and 
hatred.  He  gave  himself  and  his  millions  whole-heart- 
edly to  the  cause  of  peace  and  human  betterment.  Early 
in  life  he  gave  complete  allegiance  to  the  first  extravagant 
claims  of  Darwinism  and  the  agnostic  philosophy  of 
Herbert  Spencer.     He  seems  thereafter  to  have  shunned 


THE  BRINGER  OF  THE  KINGDOM  69 

all  thought  and  speech  of  Jesus,  as  of  one  found  some- 
how at  the  center  of  a  web  of  imposture.  He  was 
satisfied  that  the  human  race  was  steadily  developing,  and 
that  only  knowledge  was  necessary  to  bring  it  forward 
to  happiness  and  social  stability.  He  sowed  libraries  all 
up  and  down  the  nation,  confident  of  a  harvest  of  human 
welfare  and  self-mastery  for  the  common  good.  Then 
came  the  appalling  out-break  of  the  Great  War!  and — as 
his  wife  says  in  her  pathetic  preface  to  his  life  story 
' — from  then  on  his  heart  was  broken.  He  never  rallied 
from  the  shock.  Till  then  he  had  kept  the  spirit  and 
even  the  habits  of  a  young  man,  in  hearty  enjoyment  of 
all  good  sport.  But  his  life-long  hopes  lay  in  ruins, 
his  confident  optimism  was  shattered  beyond  recovery, 
and  he  had  no  inner  citadel  of  refuge. 

Jesus  builds  men's  social  hopes  and  sympathies  into  the 
Eternal  Love  and  Righteousness,  as  a  lighthouse  is  dove- 
tailed into  the  living  rock.  One  may  ridicule  the  pre- 
sumption of  such  a  confidence,  but  it  was  the  warp  and 
woof  of  the  most  fruitful  life  ever  lived  on  earth.  Year 
in  and  year  out,  Jesus  gave  Himself  to  the  Kingdom  of 
His  Father,  here  on  earth  among  men — undiscouraged  by 
crushing  odds,  undismayed  by  death.  And  those  few 
years  of  unquenchable  faith  have  wrought  more  good  for 
humanity  than  all  the  wise  and  prudent  programs  of  cau- 
tious doubters  through  the  centuries.  Sanity  is  said 
to  consist  in  the  right  interpretation  of  one's  environ- 
ment. Jesus  counted  His  environment  to  be  that  of  a 
great  campaign  of  endeavor  to  bring  to  pass  His  Father's 
will  in  human  life.  He  commends  that  interpretation  to 
men  of  today.  He  calls  all  who  believe  in  Him  to  a  great 
constructive  programme  of  love,  ignoring  the  selfish  inter- 
ests of  race  or  class.     He  cheers  them  with  the  convic- 


70        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

tion  that  their  Leader  is  God,  that  His  kingdom  is  an 
everlasting  kingdom,  and  His  dominion  endureth  through- 
out all  generations.  We  shall  not  lose  our  labor  if  we 
work  with  Him — ^we  cannot  come  to  old  age  and  the  end 
of  our  campaign  of  altruism  with  a  broken  heart. 

II 

Let  us  look  more  closely  at  Jesus'  conception  of  a 
Kingdom  of  God  among  men,  which  He  still  puts  in  the 
mind  and  heart  of  those  who  believe  in  Him.  When  He 
first  emerged  from  the  long  loneliness  of  the  carpenter's 
shop  at  Nazareth,  with  the  fresh  enthusiasm  of  a  young 
man  eager  to  help  His  people,  it  is  evident  that  He  was  a 
man  with  a  message  that  burned  like  fire  in  His  bones. 
He  was  not  acting  the  part  of  the  Messiah,  or  setting 
an  example  as  the  world's  perfect  man,  or  founding  a  new 
religion  or  a  Church,  but  bringing  to  the  people  a  mes- 
sage of  glad  tidings.  He  came  with  good  news.  We 
are  left  in  no  doubt  as  to  what  form  it  took.  It  was 
not  the  substitutionary  atonement,  or  the  doctrine  of 
His  own  majesty  as  Son  of  God.  It  was  the  "gospel 
of  the  kingdom." 

Plainly  it  was  of  tremendous  concern  to  Him.  For 
years  He  had  been  brooding  over  it  in  silence  while  He 
went  about  His  work.  His  heart  burned  with  pity  as  He 
saw  the  wretchedness  of  His  people.  He  saw  the  dull 
misery  of  human  life  on  God's  good  earth.  And  he 
felt  that  it  was  for  him — "the  carpenter's  son"— to  bring 
in  a  new  day,  to  herald  a  new  social  order.  He  called 
it  the  Kingdom  of  God,  or  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  Every 
countryman  of  His  was  thinking  about  it,  as  surely  as  an 
Irishman  today  is  thinking  about  Home  Rule.     The  na- 


THE  BRINGER  OF  THE  KINGDOM  71 

tional  literature  of  His  time,  the  so-called  apocalyptic 
literature  of  the  few  generations  before  His  day,  centered 
about  this  national  hope.  The  brief  record  of  the  synop- 
tic gospel  uses  the  expression  over  eighty  times.  Yet  it 
quickly  dropped  out  of  sight.  We  do  not  find  it  in  the 
writings  of  Paul  or  John.  It  belongs  to  Jesus  Himself. 
But  evidently  to  Him,  in  those  early  days  in  Galilee,  it 
was  at  the  very  heart  of  His  thought  and  teaching. 

Probably  the  most  difficult  problem  of  New  Testament 
study  today  is  the  problem  as  to  just  what  Jesus  meant  by 
this  message  of  the  Kingdom  close  at  hand.  Did  He 
mean  what  all  His  countrymen  meant — the  great  catas- 
trophe of  the  end  of  the  age,  to  bring  to  a  close  the  long 
drama  of  human  sin  and  suffering  by  means  of  the  last 
judgment  and  the  destruction  of  the  wicked,  with  all  the 
dramatic  setting  of  the  coming  in  the  clouds  and  the  in- 
gathering of  the  nations  by  the  angels?  Did  He  believe 
that  His  own  generation  was  to  see  the  great  final  deliver- 
ance, wrought  by  the  wrath  and  power  of  the  Almighty? 
Or  was  He  thinking  of  a  triumph  of  spiritual  forces,  creat- 
ing a  new  order  by  bringing  men  into  a  new  relation  with 
God  and  their  fellow-men?  Was  He  looking  for  a  long- 
suffering  service  of  love  to  win  men's  hearts,  or  for  a 
sudden  victory  by  the  slaughter  of  all  unbelievers  until 
— as  the  Revelation  pictures  it — blood  flowed  as  deep  as 
the  horses'  bridles?  Even  till  today  many  good  people 
are  explicitly  hoping  for  the  latter,  and  sing  joyfully 
of  the  day  when  He  shall  come  "the  lawless  to  destroy," 
and  so  crush  all  opposition  and  bring  our  difficult  labors 
to  an  end. 

We  are  confused  by  the  fact  that  His  own  disciples, 
who  recorded  His  words,  obviously  misunderstood  His 
program  for  the  future.     It  required  the  keen,  far-reach- 


72        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

ing  insight  of  such  a  leader  as  Paul  to  make  plain — even 
to  so  sympathetic  a  follower  as  Peter — the  scope  and 
meaning  of  Jesus'  plan  for  the  world.  They  expected 
Him  to  preach  a  patriotic  and  nationalistic  gospel- — in 
the  language  of  today,  lOO  per  cent  Judaism,  Palestine  for 
the  Jews,  "pure  Judaism."  They  did  not  understand  that 
He  came  to  give  new  meaning  to  the  old  submerged 
prophecy,  "through  thee  shall  all  the  peoples  of  the 
world  be  blessed";  not  by  a  great  catastrophic  day  of 
revenge  and  punishment,  but  by  the  triumphant  working 
out  of  a  spirit  like  His  own,  the  spirit  of  "the  suffering 
servant,"  in  a  patient  ministry  of  love.  That  method  can 
achieve  nothing  save  with  time,  slowly  and  at  the  cost  of 
endless  patience  and  hope  and  forbearance — "first  the 
blade,  then  the  ear,  then  the  full  corn  in  the  ear." 

Yet  it  is  beyond  dispute  that  the  thought  and  life  of 
Jesus  were  keyed  to  such  a  program  of  divine  sympathy 
as  this,  built  up  about  the  compassion  of  a  Father,  and 
not  the  insulted  majesty  of  an  Oriental  sovereign.  His 
nearest  friends — like  so  many  of  His  friends  since  then 
— would  have  hastened  the  day  of  better  things  by  calling 
down  fire  from  heaven  on  unbelievers.  Jesus  simply 
said,  "Ye  know  not  what  spirit  ye  are  of."  He  was 
working  by  different  methods,  so  indirect  and  slow,  as 
compared  with  the  swift  violence  of  cleansing  fires,  that 
they  seemed  forlornly  ineffective. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  further  this  latest  prob- 
lem of  New  Testament  interpretation.  It  is  only  possible 
to  sum  up  the  conclusion  in  which  scholarly  Christian 
thought  is  likely  to  rest,  viz.,  that  Jesus'  central  and  per- 
vading message  of  good  tidings  had  to  do  with  a  new 
spiritual  life.  His  fellow  countrymen  only  too  soon  found 
out  that  it  was  not  nationalistic  or  local  or  even  patriotic. 


THE  BRINGER  OF  THE  KINGDOM  73 

It  was  not  100  per  cent  Judaism.  It  did  not  satisfy  any 
of  their  fierce  longings  for  the  vindication  of  the  law  and 
the  overthrow  of  its  enemies.  It  was  not  orthodox,  not 
Jewish  at  all — not  even  intelligible  to  a  good  Jew.  It 
did  not  even  throw  on  Jehovah  the  responsibility  for  vin- 
dicating by  one  almighty  avenging  judgment  His  out- 
raged holiness,  but  seemed  to  leave  to  a  pitiable  company 
of  feeble  men  and  women  the  silly  undertaking  of  win- 
ning a  hateful  heathen  world  through  a  gospel  of  love 
and  divine  forgiveness. 

This  seems  to  be  the  only  conclusion  in  harmony  with 
the  broad  certainties  as  to  Jesus'  life  and  teaching,  that 
stand  out  unescapable,  unmistakable,  above  all  perplexing 
details.  Not  only  the  fact  that  he  laid  clear  stress  on  the 
spiritual  character  of  the  kingdom  as  one  already  in  the 
midst  of  them,  subject  also  to  the  slow  development  of 
natural  growth,  working  in  ways  of  love  and  leading  to 
moral  ends — but  above  all  the  fact  of  his  own  conscious- 
ness as  the  Son  of  God  sent  to  bring  back  the  children 
to  the  Father.  The  consciousness  of  such  a  mission,  so 
wonderful,  so  divinely  tender,  infinitely  transcending  all 
considerations  of  time  or  place  or  nation,  dealing  with  the 
great  underlying  realities  of  human  need  and  divine  re- 
sponse, leave  us  no  room  for  any  other  conclusion  that 
does  not  land  us  in  hopeless  confusion. 

in 

What  then  was  this  vision  of  hope  that  drove  Jesus 
hither  and  yon  unrestingly  among  the  villages  of  Galilee, 
preaching  a  new  gospel  to  the  poor?  It  was  the  vision 
of  a  new  relation  between  God  and  men,  that  should  trans- 
figure life.     The  very  best  His  people  as  a  whole  had 


74        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

dreamed  of  up  till  then,  was  the  hope  of  winning  God's 
favor  by  fearing  Him  and  keeping  His  law.  It  made 
them  anxious  and  scrupulous,  but  it  also  made  them 
proud,  self-righteous,  and  intolerant.  Always  they  had 
before  them  the  kindling  thought  that  they — one  small 
Semitic  tribe — were  the  people  of  privilege,  the  sons  of 
the  covenant.  There  was  a  contract  between  them  and 
God.  They  had  the  sublime  inheritance  of  the  law, 
and  as  they  kept  the  law  so  would  God  be  good  to  them 
and  confound  their  enemies.  And  so  their  very  privilege 
made  them  selfish,  arrogant,  useless.  All  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  men  hated  them  for  their  spiritual  conceit  and 
bigotry.     And  Jesus  was  one  of  them — a  Jew ! 

Yet  what  He  saw  by  faith  was  this !  A  new  covenant 
between  God  and  men !  Not  like  the  old,  that  was  so 
human  and  even-handed  and  that  we  can  understand  so 
well — they  to  keep  the  law  and  He  to  reward  them  with 
blessing.  That  had  worked  out  in  the  sight  of  all  the 
world  as  a  moral  failure — it  bred  pride  and  legalism, 
while  at  the  same  time  it  was  a  weary  yoke  to  wear,  and 
after  all  failed  of  the  purpose  it  had  in  view.  Jesus 
told  of  a  new  relation  between  God  and  men,  divinely 
one-sided  and  infinitely,  overwhelmingly  rich  in  mercy  and 
power — yet  thrillingly  real  and  true.  God  was  to  go  the 
whole  way  in  meeting  them  in  their  shamed  reluctance 
and  perplexity.  There  was  no  more  pretence  of  an 
evenly  balanced  exchange  of  virtue  on  their  part  and 
favor  on  His,  than  there  was  when  the  father  ran  to 
meet  that  disreputable  hobo  figure  of  his  broken-spirited 
son,  and  put  his  arms  openly  around  him  and  kissed  him. 
It  was  a  new  proposal,  not  at  all  like  any  contract  among 
men,  but  God-like  in  the  glorious  abandonment  of  its 
unpurchased  love.     Jesus  preached  good  news  of  a  king- 


THE  BRINGER  OF  THE  KINGDOM  75 

dom  of  love,  whose  King  admitted  Himself — nay,  de- 
clared Himself — the  Father  of  these  common  men  and 
women  of  the  country  villages  and  city  streets.  And 
if  any  one  pointed  to  the  stain  of  sin  on  them,  and  the 
vice  and  avarice  wrought  into  their  lives,  He  only  asked 
them  to  take  His  forgiveness  and  cleansing  to  the  full 
limit  of  their  need,  and  trust  and  love  Him  for  his  over- 
flowing goodness. 

It  was  a  new  message  indeed !  No  wonder  men  could 
not  understand  it  very  well  or  believe  it  when  they  under- 
stood it.  And  so,  in  order  to  make  it  plain,  Jesus  lived 
among  men  to  illustrate  His  Father's  purpose,  and  died 
among  men,  by  the  side  of  the  open  road,  to  confirm  and 
seal  His  message.  And  men  have  been  thinking  over  it 
ever  since,  to  try  to  understand  it  better,  and  to  see 
what  manner  of  kingdom  this  may  be  that  is  altogether 
built  on  the  holy  love  of  a  Father  for  His  children, 
and  what  sort  of  a  social  order  it  involves  for  hu- 
manity. 

Think  what  it  means  to  our  generation,  struggling  des- 
perately in  the  world-wide  net-work  of  selfish  interests, 
to  catch  the  vision  of  this  reality.  To  have  the  living 
spirit  of  Jesus  wakening  in  the  spirits  of  men  and  women 
everywhere  faith  in  such  a  kingdom  on  earth.  And  not 
only  faith  in  it,  but  passionate  devotion  to  it,  like  Jesus' 
own.  It  goes  without  saying  that  everyone  who  believes 
in  Jesus,  really  believes  in  this  kingdom  of  heaven,  here 
and  now  among  men — the  real  presence  of  God ;  the 
operative  power  of  his  forgiving,  redeeming  love  as  Father 
of  his  wandering  children ;  and  behind  all,  the  almighty 
purpose  that  His  good-will  shall  triumph  in  the  end, 
both  in  our  individual  lives  and  in  the  corporate  life  of 
men. 


76        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 


IV 

A  vision  of  love  like  this,  wide  as  the  world  and  passing 
no  one  by,  is,  of  course,  a  social  hope.  It  cannot  be 
concerned  only  with  the  saving  of  individual  lives.  It 
sweeps  away  at  once  the  old  order  of  things  amid  which 
Jesus  Himself  grew  up.  Never  again  could  there  be 
the  old  proud  aristocracy  of  godliness.  The  men  to 
whom  every  one  looked  up  in  Jesus'  town,  the  men  of 
standing  in  the  church,  were  men  who  despised  the  rabble 
as  unclean,  hated  the  Samaritan,  and  would  not  so  much 
as  eat  with  a  Greek  or  a  Roman — their  piety  was  meas- 
ured by  their  exclusiveness.  They  were  proud  of  their 
prejudices,  and  of  the  gulf  that  separated  them  from  the 
common  world. 

Jesus'  new  gospel  shattered  forever  all  idea  of  vested 
interests  in  religion,  and  left  behind  in  ruin  the  old 
world  of  prejudice  and  caste  and  ill-will.  While  He 
lived  He  was  the  friend  and  elder  brother  of  every  man 
and  woman  in  need,  Jew,  Roman,  or  Samaritan,  clean  or 
unclean.  He  said  that  God  was  like  that,  and  that  in 
His  new  kingdom  every  son  of  man — white  or  yellow  or 
black — was  on  the  same  footing  of  dignity  and  privilege 
as  God's  child.  The  only  possible  social  order,  if  this 
were  true,  is  one  of  brotherhood;  not  only  as  between 
races,  but  between  the  mutually  suspicious  and  hostile 
classes  in  our  industrial  society.  The  only  possible  basis 
is  one  of  genuine  mutual  service. 

The  visible  church  has  often  treated  this  ideal  as  if  it 
were  pure  moonshine.  But  Jesus  gave  His  life  for  it, 
and  wherever  His  spirit  penetrates  today,  men  begin  to 
catch    a    glimpse    of    this    plain,    honest    fellowship    of 


THE  BRINGER  OF  THE  KINGDOM  77 

brotherly  men.  In  the  broad  warm  sunshine  of  our 
Father's  love,  the  old,  bleak  selfishness  of  a  society  with- 
out God  simply  cannot  exist.  Where  the  gospel  of  the 
kingdom  really  penetrates,  there  begins  to  be  a  profound 
intellectual  ferment,  as  men  rouse  themselves  to  inquire 
what  it  means  to  be  their  brother's  keeper  under  actually 
prevailing  conditions. 

The  place  of  Jesus  in  the  life  of  today,  then,  is  not 
at  all  that  of  a  social  reformer  of  the  first  century,  the 
leader  of  a  tiny,  communistic  group  in  old  Jerusalem. 
As  we  apprehend  Him,  He  is  the  spirit  of  eternal  love 
applied  to  present-day  conditions,  and  working  through 
every  channel  of  twentieth-century  efficiency.  Applied 
love  might  once  have  been  content  with  the  comfortable 
patronage  of  distributing  coal  and  blankets  to  the  poor. 
But  today,  how  can  an  honest  man  fail  to  see  that  the 
principle  of  Christian  brotherhood  goes  far,  far  back 
of  superficial  charities,  back  as  far  as  the  roots  of  justice 
and  sympathy  and  intelligent  comprehension  of  the  other 
man's  needs  and  wants,  seeking  patiently,  by  endless  study 
and  experiment,  for  the  way  of  redress  and  economic 
equity  in  our  complicated  world?  "The  kingdom"  means 
the  love  of  God  applied  to  the  social  world — the  fact  of  a 
divinely  created  brotherhood  recognized  in  face  of  a  pre- 
vailing order  of  caste  and  hereditary  privilege.  To  be 
sure,  such  leadership  actually  operating  in  society  today 
means  difference  of  opinion,  and  sharp  antagonism,  and 
the  everlasting  turmoil  that  attends  on  divine  love  in 
human  society,  like  molten  iron  plunged  in  cold  water. 
But  how  is  an  honest  man  to  escape  it  if  he  believes  in 
Jesus  ? 

It  is  a  matter  of  wonder  and  humiliation  that  the  so- 
called  church  of  Christ,  for  long  periods  of  its  history, 


78        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

should  have  been  untrue  to  the  spirit  of  its  Master  so 
far  as  to  bring  measureless  hurt  to  the  very  name  of 
Christian.  For  example,  the  churches  of  the  eighteenth 
century  in  England,  both  free  and  established,  lived  in 
the  midst  of  the  most  shocking  wrongs  and  abuses,  with- 
out lifting  voice  or  hand — as  a  rule — against  the  existing 
order.  Creeds  they  had  in  abundance  concerning  the 
person  and  work  of  Jesus,  but  when  John  Wesley  and  his 
associates  came  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus  to  preach  the  simple 
gospel  of  the  kingdom  to  their  poor,  some  even  among 
the  clergy  ''sought  to  put  him  to  death,"  as  men  before  had 
put  to  death  his  Leader.  The  doctrine  of  love  honestly 
applied  to  human  need  filled  them  with  fear  and  anger,  so 
cruelly  did  it  expose  their  hollow,  selfish  formalism.  But 
Wesley  and  his  followers,  seeing  a  work  to  do,  "flung 
themselves  upon  the  task  of  saving  England."  And  pres- 
ently, under  the  influence  of  Jesus,  the  great  organizations 
of  sympathetic  love  for  the  neglected  began  to  spring 
up  everywhere,  like  violets  after  a  rain. 

One  simply  cannot  come  in  touch  with  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  without  hearing  His  call  to  this  brotherly  solicitude 
for  all  men.  One  may  join  the  church,  or  become  a  very 
**prince  of  the  church,"  and  yet  live  in  selfish  preoccupa- 
tion. But  to  believe  in  Him — just  in  proportion  to  one's 
loyalty — is  to  be  rooted  and  grounded  in  love.  As  one  of 
the  earliest  friends  of  Jesus  said,  *'We  love,  because  He 
first  loved  us."  Every  day,  as  one  reads  the  newspapers^ 
he  sees — without  noticing  them — fresh  illustrations  of 
this  principle.  It  works  out  the  same  whether  in  New 
England  or  in  lands  just  being  reached  by  the  teachings  of 
Jesus. 

For  example,  here  is  Mr.  Shinjiro  Omoto  of  Matsu- 
yama,  a  Japanese  prodigal  son.     As  a  young  man  he  was 


THE  BRINGER  OF  THE  KINGDOM  79 

banished  from  home  for  his  drunkenness  and  immorality. 
In  an  attempt  to  break  up  some  special  services  that 
Christian  missionaries  were  holding  in  a  theatre,  he  was 
himself  attracted  by  the  message  of  Jesus,  and  after 
sundry  trying  experiences  became  a  Christian.  He  took 
work  in  a  cotton-spinning  factory,  in  order  to  earn  a 
living,  and  advanced  rapidly  to  an  important  position. 
But  his  heart  ached  for  the  thousands  of  young  girls  em- 
ployed in  factory  life  and  compelled  to  live  under  dis- 
astrous conditions  morally.  It  was  not  his  business  to 
interfere  in  the  matter,  but  like  his  Master,  he  saw  these 
friendless  waifs  distressed  and  scattered  like  lost  sheep. 
He  started  what  he  called  a  "Sympathy  Society,"  a  sort 
of  night-school,  where  the  girls  could  have  wholesome 
recreation,  and  add  some  common  studies  to  their  play. 
This  was  soon  over-crowded.  Mr.  Omoto  saw  that 
little  could  be  accomplished  so  long  as  the  girls  were  com- 
pelled to  herd  together  in  the  common  lodging  houses. 
Some  sort  of  a  Christian  home  was  needed:  and  this  he 
started,  in  a  humble  way,  by  the  aid  of  American  mission- 
aries. Five  hundred  girls  enjoyed  the  shelter  of  this 
home  in  its  first  five  years,  and  so  successful  and  appealing 
was  this  humble  experiment  that  it  attracted  wide  atten- 
tion and  has  borne  fruit  in  various  ways  in  other  factory 
centers.  Mr.  Ishii's  noble  orphanage  at  Okayama  grew 
from  a  similar  seed  of  Christian  sympathy. 

Such  illustrations  of  course  could  be  multiplied  without 
end :  and  while  the  tale  was  being  told,  new  activities  of 
living  helpfulness  would  spring  up  over  night,  as  freshly 
awakened  souls  took  up  their  birthright  as  sons  and 
daughters  of  God,  obedient  to  the  leadership  of  Jesus 
Christ.  But  the  point  to  be  noted  is,  that  for  this  living 
fountain  of  social  renewal  our  generation  is  directly  in- 


8o        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

debted  to  the  gospel  of  the  Kingdom  held  up  by  Jesus 
Christ.  It  is,  one  might  almost  say,  far  more  a  gospel 
for  the  twentieth  century  than  for  the  first,  because  better 
understood,  more  widely  proclaimed,  and  more  efficiently 
applied.  It  has  the  advantage  of  a  thousand  years  of  ex- 
perimentation. It  works  divinely  well.  Is  there  anything 
else  in  the  whole  tormented  field  of  the  war  more  reassur- 
ing, more  shiningly  victorious  over  human  weakness,  than 
the  Quaker  ministry  to  the  hungry  children  of  Germany  ? 
Unadvertised,  silently  and  all  but  secretly,  they  have  been 
feeding  700,000  children  daily,  in  as  many  as  5,000 
feeding  centers.  And  the  deed,  so  in  keeping  with  their 
history,  has  sprung  directly  from  their  vital  contact  with 
Him  who  said,  ''Inasmuch  as  ye  have  done  it  to  one  of 
these  least,  ye  have  done  it  unto  me.'" 

This  is  the  fact  to  be  noted,  that  the  place  of  Jesus 
in  the  life  of  today  is  one  of  tremendous  and  immeasur- 
able consequence  for  good-will  among  men,  and  for  ap- 
plied sympathy  in  forms  as  various  as  human  needs. 
Our  world  is  seething  with  intellectual  activities,  and  eco- 
nomic and  social  theorists  and  reformers  fill  our  ears  with 
their  ever-new  proposals  and  appeals.  Many  of  us  are  too 
timid  to  mention  the  name  of  Jesus  in  such  scholarly 
company,  lest  we  be  smiled  at  as  antiquated  or  conven- 
tional. And  yet  it  is  the  spirit  of  Jesus  that  is  actually  in- 
corporating millions  of  men  and  women  in  a  kingdom  of 
world-wide  fellowship  of  love  and  service  that  has  its 
assurance  of  permanence  and  success  in  the  almighty 
will  of  God.  Their  unquenchable  activity  is  the  witness 
to  the  continuing  kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  Full  in  the 
face  of  human  distrust  and  bitterness  and  opposition  is 
this  holy,  loving,  redeeming  will  at  work  to  bring  about  a 
brotherhood  of  men  rooted  in  the  supreme  wonder  of  the 


THE  BRINGER  OF  THE  KINGDOM  8i 

Fatherhood  of  God.  As  Benjamin  Kidd  has  recently  said, 
"Jesus  is  the  center  of  the  greatest  power  system  which 
has  arisen  in  history."  Even  in  university  circles  one 
does  not  need  to  patronize  Him,  or  mention  His  name  with 
apology.  One  might  as  well  apologize  for  any  other  mys- 
terious primal  force,  like  that  of  atomic  energy. 

Thousands  of  happy  people  were  leaving  last  week  for 
over-seas.  But  among  the  crowd  on  the  dock  at  San 
Francisco  was  a  little  group  of  six  young  people  on  a 
peculiar  errand.  They  were  ordinary  Salvation  Army 
soldiers,  leaving  home  for  a  term  of  seven  years'  service 
in  leper  settlements  in  the  Far  East.  Perhaps  they  would 
return,  perhaps  not:  but  it  was  a  cheery,  hopeful  party. 
Possibly  money  could  have  bought  so  lonely  and  repul- 
sive a  service,  possibly  not.  But  it  was  not  money  they 
were  thinking  of.  It  was  the  love  of  Christ  that  warmed 
their  hearts  with  pity  for  outcast,  suffering  brothers  and 
sisters  across  the  sea.  Class-room  and  arm-chair  re- 
formers of  society  are  easy  to  find.  But  those  who  ac- 
tually go  down  into  the  pit  for  a  lifetime,  as  did  Gen. 
and  Mrs.  Booth  with  the  children  of  despair  and  misery, 
are,  so  to  speak,  purchased  with  Hfe-blood. 

And  here  is  this  peculiar  yet  inseparable  quality  about 
the  spirit  of  Jesus,  that  underlies  the  whole  structure 
of  His  kingdom  today.  The  "friendly  community"  of 
well-disposed  and  mutually  helpful  people  is  not  the  whole 
story.  Good-nature  and  generous  sympathy  and  tolerance 
are  not  the  only  forces  that  are  demanded.  Very  much 
of  our  thinking  and  writing  about  the  pleasant  theme  of 
the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  Brotherhood  of  Man,  the 
leadership  of  Jesus  and  the  universal  duty  of  social  ser- 
vice, leaves  out  of  sight  one  necessary  element  that  Jesus 
never  lost  from  sight.     One  word  is  missing — the  unwel- 


82        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

come  word  "cost."  Every  day  of  Jesus'  life  was  saturated 
with  the  thought  of  God,  and  of  His  fatherly  love,  so 
willing  to  sacrifice  to  prevail  over  human  sin.  Here 
is  where  the  urgency  and  the  solemnity,  the  mystery  and 
the  power,  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus  about  the  longed-for 
Kingdom  of  God,  find  their  explanation.  He  knew  what 
the  Fatherhood  of  God  costs — what  the  Brotherhood  of 
Man  costs — what  the  actual  saving  of  a  lost  man  or 
woman  costs.  His  effort  to  realize  it  in  His  own  ministry 
made  Him,  for  all  His  attractive  quality,  a  man  de- 
spised and  forsaken,  acquainted  well  with  grief. 

In  the  race  for  comfort  and  wealth  and  ease  today, 
what  is  it  worth  to  have  a  Leader  like  this,  just  next  us 
in  spiritual  contact,  to  hold  us  true  to  such  a  kingdom? 
To  link  us  up  with  the  purposes  of  God,  while  we  must 
yet  live  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  avarice  and  all  selfish 
lusts?  That  is  the  place  Jesus  fills  in  this  year  of  the 
twentieth  century — of  one  who  does  in  fact  make  men 
and  women  a  part  of  the  army  of  love,  of  the  working 
Kingdom  of  God.  He  cuts  a  man  clean  away  from  dis- 
loyalty and  indecision,  as  with  a  sharp  sword.  His  call 
leaves  no  room  for  any  lingering  insubordination  at  any 
point — as  by  tolerating  secretly  the  indecency  and  dis- 
honor of  popular  up-to-date  novels  and  plays  and  social 
standards.  Not  because  those  who  believe  in  Him  set  up 
to  be  better  than  their  neighbors,  but  because  they  know 
themselves  to  be  the  children  of  a  holy  God.  One  purer 
than  their  mothers,  truer  than  their  fathers,  the  very 
heart  and  source  of  worth  and  goodness,  They  are  to  be 
unhesitant  as  Cromwell's  Ironsides,  as  soldiers  of  a  great 
purpose — a  purpose  oft  assailed,  perhaps  often  shaken, 
but  never  to  be  laid  down  till  dishonor  is  to  be  preferred 
to  death. 


THE  BRINGER  OF  THE  KINGDOM  83 

So,  even  though  Jesus  is  still  despised  and  rejected  of 
men,  we  seek  Him  out  today,  only  fearing  lest  any  cool 
altruistic  purpose  should  come  between  Him  and  our 
heart's   devotion. 


Chapter  VI 
JESUS  AS  AN  OUTSTRETCHED  HAND 

There  is  one  reason  above  others  why  our  modern 
world  will  not  let  Jesus  go :  because  in  Him  men  actually 
find  an  outstretched  hand  of  help.  They  may  not  be 
able  to  argue  very  well  about  the  psychology  of  religion, 
but  they  will  cling  to  the  hand  that  raised  them  up  out  of 
the  shame  and  darkness  of  moral  defeat.  A  group  of 
men  sitting  pleasantly  about  the  table  over  the  coffee  and 
cigars  will  discuss  the  problem  of  racial  prejudice  with 
cool,  academic  reserve.  But  if  one  of  them  were  lying 
on  a  heap  of  stones  by  the  roadside,  beaten  up  by  thugs 
and  thrown  out  of  a  car  to  die,  and  a  friendly  Chinaman 
were  to  raise  him  up,  and  bring,  him  bewildered  back  to 
consciousness,  and  bind  up  his  wounds  and  carry  him  to  a 
place  of  safety  and  rest  and  nursing — all  at  the  risk  of 
his  life  there  in  the  lonely  night — he  will  have  had  at 
least  one  experience  of  social  solidarity,  of  which  he  will 
never  be  able  to  speak  without  deep  feeling.  And  there 
are  millions  of  common  people  who  feel  just  in  this 
intense,  unreasoning  way  about  the  spiritual  leader  who 
is  still  despised  and  rejected  of  men.  As  Pascal  says, 
"the  heart  has  its  reasons  of  which  the  world  knows 
nothing."  They  cannot  discuss  critical  questions  about 
documents,  but  they  have  felt  the  healing  touch  of  divine 
pity  and  out  of  weakness  have  been  made  strong.  What 
they  feel  to  be  God's  help  has  reached  them  in  an  emer- 

84 


JESUS  AS  AN  OUTSTRETCHED  HAND         85 

gency  through  their  faith  in  Jesus ;  and  always  afterwards 
in  life  they  feel  toward  Jesus  as  one  must  feel  toward  a 
friend  who  has  show  him  unforgetable  kindness.  There 
are  all  sorts  of  kindnesses,  but  this  is  of  supreme  excel- 
lence in  that  it  lifts  one  up  toward  God.  For  sensitive 
souls  there  is  the  thrill  of  love  in  it,  as  well  as  power,  and 
it  binds  their  spirits  in  loyalty  to  him  ever  after,  so  long 
as  they  have  any  being.  Learned  men  may  discuss  in  the 
religious  press  whether  or  not  the  church  is  losing  its 
hold  on  modern  society :  and  often  the  reason  is  obvious 
enough  when  it  is  losing  hold.  But  does  any  one  sup- 
pose that  common  folk  throughout  the  world  are  going  to 
let  go  of  Jesus  if  he  actually  brings  them  to  see  and 
share  God's  life,  in  spite  of  their  sin? 

Browning,  in  his  "Epitaph  of  One  of  Nero's  Slaves," 
puts  in  his  mouth  the  familiar  words : 

"I  was  some  time  in  being  burned : 
But  at  the  close  a  hand  came  through 
The  fire  above  my  head,  and  drew 
My  soul  to  Christ,  whom  now  I  see." 

"A  hand  came  through."  So  Jesus  dawns  even  on  the 
sophisticated  life  of  our  day.  When  the  eternal  mystery 
breaks  through  from  God  to  human  eyes,  it  is  as  a  hand 
stretched  out  to  help.  When  the  ultimate,  unknown 
power  beyond  the  universe  would  make  Himself  better 
known  to  men,  it  is  in  this  winsome  form  of  one  who 
came  to  do  what  a  mighty  friend  might  do  for  human 
life.  Not  at  all  as  once  in  the  long  past  when  "out  of  the 
fire  and  blackness  and  tempest  came  the  voice  of  words, 
which  they  that  heard  entreated  that  no  word  should  be 
spoken  to  them" — when  even  Moses  "did  exceedingly  fear 
and  quake,*' 


86        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

Thank  God!  those  days  of  dull  understanding  have 
passed  away.  For  long  ages  men  in  every  land  had 
"stretched  lame  hands  of  faith,  and  groped,  and  gathered 
dust  and  chaff."  But  when  the  glory  of  God  dawned 
like  the  morning  star  on  human  life,  men  saw  it  in  the 
face  of  one  meek  and  lowly  in  heart,  a  man  himself  made 
perfect  by  suffering,  that  he  might  be  the  Good  Physician 
for  all  time,  a  man  who  called  himself  the  Good  Shepherd 
of  the  straying  sheep,  and  who  went  deep  into  the  wilder- 
ness and  the  mountains  to  find  and  bring  home  such  as 
had  lost  their  way. 

"And  none  of  the  ransomed  ever  knew, 

How  deep  were  the  waters  crossed. 

Nor  how  dark  was  the  night  our  Lord  went  through, 

Ere  he  found  the  sheep  that  was  lost." 

The  simple  words  touch  the  profoundest  depths  of  human 
consciousness.  Men  interpret  God  through  that  undaunted 
Shepherd,  and  know  that  He  is  very  good. 

We  shall  best  understand  what  place  remains  for  Jesus 
in  the  life  of  today  as  the  revealed  sympathy  of  God,  if 
we  look  inquiringly  at  His  behavior  when  He  lived  for 
a  little  while  in  the  sight  of  men.  To  be  sure,  we  are 
familiar  with  it  all,  but  one  never  refuses  another  look  at 
a  beautiful  painting,  to  say  nothing  of  a  beautiful  life. 
And  almost  at  once,  in  the  first  chapter  of  the  story,  we  see 
Him  in  His  most  characteristic  gesture  and  action.  A 
loathsome  and  disgusting  figure  thrust  itself  upon  His 
notice — a  leper  banished  from  the  common  haunts  of  men. 
He  did  not  ask  for  money,  but  for  what  no  money  could 
buy — a  clean  body,  at  rest  from  pain.  What  did  Jesus 
do?  He  did  not  do  what  you  or  I  would  have  done,  or 
what  any  other  man  of  His  race  would  have  down  to 


JESUS  AS  AN  OUTSTRETCHED  HAND         87 

this  lonely  wretch,  unclean  and  dangerous.  By  Jewish 
law  and  custom  the  leper  was  cut  off  from  common  life, 
and  from  any  close  approach  to  his  fellows.  Cursing 
and  cruelty  were  his  life-long  portion.  But  Jesus 
stretched  out  His  hand  and  touched  him — as  a  brother 
might — as  God  might — lingeringly  and  lovingly,  unafraid, 
as  one  sent  to  meet  him  there  and  draw  him  out  of  hell. 
Surely,  the  leper  saw  God  looking  out  through  Jesus' 
face! 

Would  that  we  might  have  seen  and  read  what  was  in 
Jesus'  eyes,  and  understood,  so  that  life-long  thereafter  we 
might  rest  on  sucli  a  God  as  that,  loving  Him  heart  and 
soul  and  mind  and  strength  for  His  sympathy  and  under- 
standing and  compassion!  But  if  we  choose,  we  can 
meet  men  by  the  score  today,  commonplace  figures  on  the 
street,  who  will  say  that  Jesus  has  drawn  them  out  of  a 
worse  hell  than  leprosy,  and  that  they  have  seen  and  felt 
the  pity  and  power  of  God  through  Him.  The  same  hand 
has  lifted  them  up.  We  need  to  remember  this  when 
men  tell  us  that  our  generation  has  outgrown  the  need 
of  Jesus. 

Then,  later  on,  we  have  the  picture  of  Jesus  saving  a 
drowning  man.  His  friend  Peter,  having  leaped  over- 
board from  the  shelter  of  the  boat,  and  feeling  for  the 
first  time  the  full  force  of  the  wind  and  the  driven  spray 
like  hail,  was  just  sinking  below  the  frothing  waves. 
Jesus  caught  him  in  a  grip  made  vise-like  by  years  of 
work  with  plane  and  saw,  and  drew  him  back  to  life. 
Peter's  faith  failed  him  just  at  the  crisis,  as  it  did  at  a 
deadlier  crisis,  later  on.  He  miscalculated  his  courage, 
and  was  going  under.  And  just  at  the  moment  of  terror 
— terror  of  death  or  worse — a  great  pitying  love  reached 
out  to  him  by  a  man's  hand  and  saved  him.     The  hand 


88        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

was  that  of  Jesus- — but  the  understanding  sympathy, 
quick  to  help,  was  that  of  the  Father  of  our  spirits,  in 
whom,  unseen,  we  Hve  and  move  and  have  our  being. 
If  such  a  hand  could  reach  to  a  tempted  young  fellow  in 
our  city  streets  today,  there  would  be  a  place  in  the 
twentieth  century  for  Jesus  still,  .would  there  not ! 

And  then  again  we  have  the  scene  where  Jesus  stood 
looking  down  at  the  bed  where  lay  the  little  daughter  of 
the  home,  dead.  Father  and  mother  stood  behind  Him, 
awed  and  silent,  and  His  three  friends  helpless  to  aid  or 
comfort.  But  He  in  whom  the  power  of  God  was, 
reached  down  and  took  her  hand  in  His,  calling  her,  and 
watched  the  tide  of  life  flow  back,  and  when  her  hand  was 
warm  again.  He  lifted  her  up,  and  left  her  to  her  parents. 

It  must  have  been  an  inexpressible  joy  to  him  to  do 
this  thing,  because  it  summed  up  visibly  the  very  spirit 
of  His  mission.  When  God  reaches  through  to  touch 
men  with  fatherly  sympathy,  it  is  that  they  may  have 
life  and  have  it  abundantly.  So  Jesus  Himself  said.  A 
few  years  more  or  less  under  the  sun  is  nothing  by  com- 
parison, and  yet  it  is  a  stunning  marvel  to  see  the  body's 
lease  of  life  lengthened  out  unexpectedly  even  by  a  hand's 
breadth.  But  just  as  the  soul  is  greater  than  the  body,  so 
it  is  a  greater  thing  by  far  to  put  within  the  soul  the 
conscious  power  of  an  endless  life,  or  to  cleanse  and 
vivify  and  widen  its  capacities  here  on  earth.  And  this 
is  what  Jesus  obviously  was  doing  for  His  friends  and 
acquaintances  when  He  was  with  them.  He  stretched 
out  a  hand  of  beckoning  invitation  to  a  couple  of  local 
fishermen  whom  he  knew — James  and  John — and  led  them 
on  and  up  until,  instead  of  being  village  fish-pedlars, 
they  became  "friends  of  all  the  world,"  lifting  men  up 
toward  God.     He  saw  that  fearsome  madman  among  the 


JESUS  AS  AN  OUTSTRETCHED  HAND         89 

tombs,  and  scattered  his  dreadful  night,  and  sent  him 
home  in  joy  to  tell  what  Jesus  had  done  for  him.  He 
gathered  little  children  in  His  arms  to  bless  them,  and 
when  He  died  ''with  out-stretched  arms  in  mortal  woe," 
they  were  flung  out  in  sheer  love  as  if  to  embrace  the 
world. 

You  could  scarcely  find  an  artist  in  our  generation  who 
would  depict  Jesus  as  a  philosopher,  with  hands  muffled 
in  His  robe.  We  reverence  Socrates  in  such  an  attitude, 
but  it  would  be  curiously  impossible  and  incongruous  for 
Jesus.  His  hands  are  free  and  busy  with  service.  Simply 
because  He  was  not  a  philosopher  but  a  Saviour,  and  the 
most  untutored  mind  recognizes  Him  as  such.  He  spoke 
the  universal  language  of  help  and  love,  and  its  power 
and  attraction  are  timeless.  The  Russian  Soviets  could 
no  more  cast  Him  out  of  men's  hearts  than  they  could 
forbid  men  the  sunlight.  It  warms  and  cheers.  So  does 
the  glory  of  God  as  it  shines  in  the  face  of  Jesus.  His 
voice  may  be  drowned  out  for  a  little  while,  but  presently 
it  will  be  heard  again,  like  the  silenced  chimes  in  Belgium, 
rippling  now  with  joy. 

II 

But  has  Jesus  lived  on  into  our  twentieth  century,  and 
is  He  as  truly  as  ever  He  was  an  outstretched  hand  of 
heavenly  love  for  needy  men?  Let  any  one  answer,  any- 
where under  heaven,  from  Oxford  to  Peking,  who  has 
sincerely  turned  to  Him  in  faith  that  He  would  redeem, 
even  from  life's  dregs.  It  is  not  fair  to  ask  those  who 
hold  the  coolly  critical  attitude  of  unbelief,  because  in  the 
nature  of  the  case  the  spiritual  influence  of  Jesus  can 
lonly  be  imparted  by  that  contact  of  spirit  which  faith 


90        PLACE  OF  JESUS  IN  THE  LIFE  OF  TODAY 

affords.  No  more  today  than  once  in  His  own  home 
town  can  He  do  any  mighty  works  for  those  whose  minds 
are  closed  against  Him.  But  where  men  reach  out  to 
Him  in  the  audacity  of  need,  that  hand  responds.  This 
is  not  the  assertion  of  the  church,  it  is  the  witness  of 
human  experience  the  world  over. 

This  is  what  Francis  Thompson,  the  poet,  meant  when 
he  spoke  of  Christ  walking  not  now  on  Galilee  but  on  the 
River  Thames.  Thompson  was  one  who  knew  by  ex- 
perience. He  had  almost  gone  under :  he  had  drunk  to  the 
dregs  the  cup  of  sin  and  poverty  and  loneliness  in  London. 
To  use  his  own  words : 

"In  the  rash  lustihood  of  my  young  powers, 

I  shook  the  pillaring  hours 
And  pulled  my  life  upon  me:  grimed  with  smears 
I  stand  amid  the  dust  of  mounded  years — 
My  mangled  youth  lies  dead  beneath  the  heap. 
My  days  have  crackled  and  gone  up  in  smoke.'* 

Yet  it  was  he  who  wrote  later: 

"Yea,  in  the  night,  my  soul,  my  daughter 
Cry !  clinging  heaven  by  the  hems. 
And  lo !  Christ,  walking  on  the  water, 
Not  of  Gennesareth  but  Thames !" 


THE  END 


